The year was 2007. Americans wanted nothing more than an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. When President George W. Bush claimed that doing so before receiving orders from military commanders would prove dangerous for Iraq and the U.S., his warnings fell largely on deaf ears. It turns out, now, that his predictions were eerily precise, his former chief speechwriter, Marc Thiessen, said.
On July 12, 2007, Bush took to the podium to answer critics of his order for a troop surge, Newsmax reported.
"It would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al Qaeda," Bush said at the time. "It would mean that we'd be risking mass killings on a horrific scale. It would mean we allow the terrorists to establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they lost in Afghanistan."
Thiessen, who is now a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, crafted that statement and appeared on Fox News Channel's "The Kelly File" on Thursday to discuss it. "Every single thing that President Bush said there in that statement is happening today," he said.
In the 2008 presidential election, part of the reason American citizens decided to vote for Obama was with the hope that he would end the war in Iraq. As promised, the United States began an 18-month process of withdrawal, with CNN boasting the exit of the last of U.S. troops from Iraq shortly before Christmas 2011, a move that the commanders on the ground advised against.
In addition, when the commanders recommended leaving 20,000 troops in Iraq, Obama left none.
However, "that exit left a vacuum in Iraq, one which has all too quickly been filled by the Islamic State forces, the horrific terror organization that the world has come to know as ISIS or ISIL," Inquisitr reported.
"President Bush said that if we did that there would be mass killings on a horrific scale," Theissen said. "What are we seeing? Mass killings on a horrific scale: executions, women and children being buried alive, crucifixions, beheadings of American journalists."
Bush also made it clear that abandoning Iraq "would mean increasing the probability that American troops would have to return at some later date to confront an enemy that is even more dangerous."
Currently, the Islamic State (ISIS), the successor to al Qaeda in Iraq, has managed to carve out a huge territory in Iraq and Syria, Thiessen said, adding that Bush's strategy for a troop surge had been right all along since it bought an end to the power forces of al Qaeda.
"The surge worked against every prediction of the experts," Thiessen said, "and al Qaeda in Iraq [now ISIS] was defeated."
Bush's speech begins at the 9:00 point onwards. But do you believe he was right?
