Morell: ‘AQI Would Never Have Rebounded’ If US Had Left Troops In Iraq

Former CIA Director Michael Morell declared “AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq] would never have rebounded had we stayed there in some number” on Wednesday’s “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel.

Morell initially stated, “I think that the strategy in Iraq, right, is the only strategy that we can pursue over the long term, which is Iraqis have to win this thing themselves, right? Which means the Iraqi forces have to do this. We have to train them. They were trained once. Former Prime Minister Maliki destroyed that military, and now we have to put it back together.”

He added, “So, 2011, the end of 2011, when the US military left the country, AQI, which was the predecessor to ISIS, was at its weakest point, it was at its nadir. As soon as we left, they started to rebound. They started to rebound because the military pressure came off of them, and they started to rebound because Prime Minister Maliki, without the US there to babysit him, started making a whole rash of bad political decisions [which] alienated Sunnis.” And “The bottom line is AQI would never have rebounded had we stayed there in some number.”

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