the time we got through the surge in 07 and 08, president bush made a courageous and very correct decision and iraq was in good shape when we left office and barack obama said as much. what happened basically was they failed to follow through, they withdrew as quickly as possible and left no stay behind force there. they created a vacuum and the vacuum was filled by isis. how dangerous do you really think isis is now to homeland security? american soil. i think extraordinarily dangerous partly because of their ability to recruit from the united states people become members of isis to go to syria, iraq and so forth. i think the danger of having those people return having trained for example over there or their ability to motivate people in the united states and elsewhere in other parts of the world to become hardened followers, if you will of that
Transcripts for CNN Situation Room With Wolf Blitzer 20150831 21:17:15
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a lot of the critics said if the invasion of iraq hadn t begun isis wouldn t have a toehold. is there any truth to that? saddam hussein would still be in power and at lies thought he had the chemical and biological weapons as every leading democrat in the senate did and the house and all the allies in the middle east and libya would not have turned over its nuclear weapons. the fact is you take the world the way it s given to you and as of the time president obama took other, there was stability in iraq. iraq was a stable country, and that s why he himself said he was going to withdraw the troops. i was in iraq both during the tough times in 04, 3 and 04 and back there in 07 and 10 and the difference even in 07 and then in 2010 was a stable country. it was not perfect, but it was nowhere near what it is today and isis and back then it was known as al qaeda in iraq was