During an interview with former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Tuesday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer cited Panetta's criticism of President Obama in a new memoir and made a surprisingly tough observation: "So did the President put the vital interests of the United States on a lower priority than fulfilling a campaign promise to end the war and pull out all troops?"
Panetta tried to soften the accusation: "No, you know, I wouldn't say that about the President. I think he really did want to try to do what was right. But his feeling was if [former Iraqi Prime Minister] Maliki doesn't want it, you know, why should we keep pushing on this?...But the fact was, unless we had that presence there, we would lose the leverage on Maliki to keep him in the right place."
Despite Panetta's attempt dial back his critique of the President, the quote Lauer cited made the former cabinet member's feelings clear: "Those on our side of the debate viewed the White House as so eager to rid itself of Iraq that it was willing to withdraw rather than lock in arrangements that would preserve our influence and interests."
At the top of the exchange, Lauer invited Panetta to go after Obama: "You warned that Iraq would slide back and that it would become a safe haven for terror groups again. Both things have happened. Did the President make the wrong call?"
Lauer did bring Panetta's own judgement into question in terms of assessing the stability of Iraq:
Let me read you what you said at a Pentagon press briefing about three years ago on the subject of, are we leaving Iraq in a vulnerable situation? You said this. "The one thing we've seen is that Iraq has developed a very good capability to be able to defend itself. The Iraqis have developed a very important capability here to be able to respond to security threats within their own country." Were you saying what you were told to say? Or did you get it very wrong?
Panetta responded: "I thought we had made good progress with their security force and with their intelligence operations in going after Al Qaeda. But in order for that to really do the job, I think we needed to have a presence there....in order to be able to ensure that we would never see something like ISIS ever develop."
Lauer proceeded to use Obama's own words to dismiss the administration's current strategy of fighting ISIS: "In Syria, we are arming moderate members of the opposition, a group that the President and Vice President over the last several months have called 'doctors, shopkeepers, and farmers.' Are we kidding ourselves?"
After Panetta criticized Obama in a lengthy September 21 60 Minutes interview, both NBC and ABC ignored the story. At least NBC is finally catching up.
Here is a full transcript of Lauer's October 7 interview with Panetta:
7:00 AM ET TEASE:
MATT LAUER: This morning, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on why he says the President's actions have empowered ISIS.
7:14 AM ET SEGMENT:
LAUER: Now more on the U.S.-led fight against ISIS and the new criticism of the President's handling of the situation. In Leon Panetta's new memoir, Worthy Fights, the former defense secretary and CIA director, [coughs] excuse me, says the President's past decisions on Iraq and Syria have helped strengthen the terror group, making the battle against them more difficult. Secretary Panetta, it's good to see you as always, welcome.
LEON PANETTA: Nice to be with you, Matt.
[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Strong Words for The President; Fmr. Defense Sec'y & CIA Chief on Iraq, ISIS]
LAUER: You were one of the loud voices several years ago urging the President to leave behind a residual force of combat troops in Iraq despite the fact that the Iraqis had placed some pretty strong conditions on that. You warned that Iraq would slide back and that it would become a safe haven for terror groups again. Both things have happened. Did the President make the wrong call?
PANETTA: I think the President, you know, was trying to get Maliki to accept a presence. We agreed that we were going to leave about 8,000 to 10,000 troops in Iraq and that we were going to leave intelligence operations, diplomatic operations there. And he was pushing Maliki to try to agree to that. Maliki put up a resistance.
LAUER: Did he push hard enough?
PANETTA: I think that's the question. Because you know, as tough as Maliki was on this issue – and there was sense, "Well, if Maliki doesn't want it, why should we?" – I thought it was really important for us to try to maintain that presence and use some of the leverage we had against Maliki. We were providing military aide, we were providing assistance. I think we should have challenged him with regards to that issue.
LAUER: Your words from the book, "Those on our side of the debate viewed the White House as so eager to rid itself of Iraq that it was willing to withdraw rather than lock in arrangements that would preserve our influence and interests." So did the President put the vital interests of the United States on a lower priority than fulfilling a campaign promise to end the war and pull out all troops?
PANETTA: No, you know, I wouldn't say that about the President. I think he really did want to try to do what was right. But his feeling was if Maliki doesn't want it, you know, why should we keep pushing on this? And also, I think he felt that there was an opportunity here. We had obviously sacrificed a lot of people, we put them on the right track in terms of security and governing themselves, and I think his hope was that somehow this thing would all go in the right direction. But the fact was, unless we had that presence there, we would lose the leverage on Maliki to keep him in the right place.
LAUER: If we could have kept that presence there, would we be fighting ISIS in the same levels we're fighting them right now?
PANETTA: Matt, that's always hard to say. But my view is if we had 10,000 troops there in Iraq and we had a presence there to keep the pressure on Maliki, that we would have done an awful lot to protect his security force and an awful lot to be able to go after Al Qaeda there.
LAUER: Let me read you what you said at a Pentagon press briefing about three years ago on the subject of, are we leaving Iraq in a vulnerable situation? You said this. "The one thing we've seen is that Iraq has developed a very good capability to be able to defend itself. The Iraqis have developed a very important capability here to be able to respond to security threats within their own country." Were you saying what you were told to say? Or did you get it very wrong?
PANETTA: No, you know, at the time when we were there, I thought we had made good progress with their security force and with their intelligence operations in going after Al Qaeda. But in order for that to really do the job, I think we needed to have a presence there in order to make sure that we continued the effort on improving their security, continued the effort on improving their intelligence operations, in order to be able to ensure that we would never see something like ISIS ever develop.
LAUER: In Syria, we are arming moderate members of the opposition, a group that the President and Vice President over the last several months have called "doctors, shopkeepers, and farmers." Are we kidding ourselves? And if you were secretary of defense right now, would you be telling the President of the United States that we would need ground troops, combat troops on the ground in Syria to successfully wage this fight against ISIS?
PANETTA: In order for us to be able to win against ISIS – there's no question we're doing the right thing. The President's calling the right shots with regards to air attacks, with regards to counterterrorism operations.
LAUER: Will it eventually take ground combat troops?
PANETTA: In order to do it, you need to have some boots on the ground, in order to obviously embed and train those forces. And in Syria, what we'd like to do is to have the opposition forces be those boots on the ground. But if that is not enough, if the military says we've got to do more, than I think the President ought to be open to that.
LAUER: You would have told the President, don't shut that door, leave that door open if you want to truly win the war against ISIS?
PANETTA: The President, as commander-in-chief, has to have all options on the table in order to deal with this challenge of being able to win against ISIS.
LAUER: Leon Panetta. Mr. Secretary, it's good to have you here.
PANETTA: Nice to be with you.
LAUER: And I want to remind people, the book is called Worthy Fights.
