Leon Panetta to MSNBC: Fallujah Should’ve Been a ‘Wake Up Call’ for Obama

Former Defense Secretary and CIA Director Leon Panetta spoke to MSNBC anchor Andrea Mitchell on Tuesday and offered careful critiques of numerous aspects of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. Panetta faulted the previous administration and other Arab nations for the disintegration of Iraq, but ultimately said that Obama should have heeded warnings on leaving troops in Iraq and arming the Syrian rebels.

“With Maliki objecting, I think the general sense in the White House was that we cannot want this more than Maliki,” Panetta said. “After all, this was his country, his security force. Surely if he didn’t want it, why should we push him? My view was we should push him because frankly that was the only way to try to help guarantee that we would try to keep moving in the right direction.”

RELATED: Fmr. Defense Sec. Panetta: Obama Should Have Already Armed Syrian Rebels

Panetta addressed Obama’s comments two weeks ago on 60 Minutes about intelligence underestimating the rise of ISIS, saying that you could “always use better intelligence,” but adding that “policy failures” combined to aid the rise of the militant group.

“Once Fallujah fell, that should have been a wake up call,” Panetta said. “If they could take Fallujah, there’s no reason they couldn’t take Baghdad.”

Watch the clip below, via MSNBC:

[Image via screengrab]

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