into a blood bath based on faulty intelligenceance sanctioned torture and savaged the representation around the world and then left the american economy in tatters, he is talking about president obama. just to drive home audacity and absurdity, in a cowboy hat. we stand at a critical moment in the life of our nation. the policies of the last six years have left america diminished and weakened. our enemies no longer fear us and our allies no longer trust us. the weakened america, the kpro miz eed trust about there,t was not a reality confessional about the bush administration. he is saying in a u tube video with a totally straight face and cowboy hat that the iraq mess is all president obama s fault. joining us now from washington is democratic congressman from new york s 16th district elliott
don t think there was any way president obama could reach that result nor could george w. bush have reached that result. the iraqi government simply said no. and now we know that the iraqi government said no because they are backed by iran, prime minister maliki is backed by iran and iran had said absolutely not. it s not as if president obama didn t try very hard to do what had been envisioned by both george w. bush and president obama. but it was not in fact possible. that s really just a cheap shot. let me follow up on that. if you if the president didn t get to do what he wanted to do, was there a sense internally or at the state department that something a situation like this could arise or would be an inevitable outcome? well, we certainly worry very deeply about leaving completely but in the end as it became clearer that the force we were going to be able to leave was
president is meeting with congressional leadership about the very issue of what to do in iraq. while there does not seem to be a good option, there seems to be a consensus that something needs to be done. what do you think that thing is? that s what the president is trying to put together now because there s really no easy choice here. this is something that s very, very difficult. some people have suggested we make an alliance with iran. i think that would be a foolish thing to do. iran is making mischief in syria. what s happening in iraq is essentially a spillover of the civil war in syria. so i think that probably some action by the united states down the line to try to prevent isis from overrunning iraq is warranted but what that should be, we don t quite know. the reason why we have to interrupt isis and i m not in
the op-ed. you i think rightfully point out the interlinkage between iraq and syria, they are one in the same to a certain degree. they are. and the white house post tour of not doing much in syria has been greatly complicated by the fact they seem willing too do something in iraq. are you confident it will be a multipronged approach, they with do something about syria too? no, i m not. that s why i wrote the op-ed. let me start with what president obama is doing right. he s telling the maliki government we are not going to lift a finger to help them unless they have the power sharing agreement with the sunnis and the kurds that is the only hope of a representative government that will in fact be able to achieve what the whole iraqi people want. he s talking to iran and i think he s right to talk to iran. those are two good things. what i m very worried about,
going to get smaller and smaller and ultimately was nothing, we also knew that that really ham. erred our ability to do the kind of development work and diplomatic work and on the groundwork that we thought iraq needed still to become a stable representative democracy of any kind. so we were aware of the dangers, but we had committed to ending the war. we tried to leave soldiers behind. the iraqi government simply would not agree on terms that we could accept. susan, let me go to you now to discuss this is a multidimensional crisis. on one hand it s a foreign policy issue. it also we have new polling numbers out and president is facing zsh does not have a huge amount of support when it comes to the american public in terms of his foreign policy chops and whether he can get it done to put it in terms dick cheney would understand. as he decides what to do on the foreign policy front. i wonder how much you think at