During an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Monday, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden said that the 2011 withdrawal of troops from Iraq was a “mistake in the sense that” a residual force could not stay due to an agreement struck by former President George W. Bush.

Biden stated, “Well, it was a mistake in the sense that, the president asked me to draw down 150,000 combat troops, and I was in charge of that. And I pled with the Iraqi government to allow a residual force to stay so we could stay focused on, then, al Qaeda, before ISIS. But President Bush had made a deal with the Iraqis that all the forces would be out. We could not get the votes in the parliament to change it, so that we would be able to, with permission, stay in the region.”

(h/t Grabien)

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