US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign has said the 2001 invasion and following occupation of Afghanistan was President Barack "Obama's war."
The United States -- under GOP leader George W. Bush’s presidency -- and its allies invaded Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror. The offensive removed the Taliban regime from power, but after about one and a half decade, the foreign troops are still deployed to the country.
After becoming the president in 2008, Obama vowed to end the Afghan war -- one of the longest conflicts in US history – but he failed to keep his promise.
In an interview with CNN's Victor Blackwell on Saturday, Trump’s spokeswoman Katrina Pierson was asked about Trump’s comments that Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton “founded” the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group, and if they were sarcastic, as the GOP nominee had later on claimed, as report by the Politico.
She said that Trump did not mean Obama or Clinton literally created the Daesh Takfiri organization, "they didn't file the paperwork of incorporation."
"If you want to go way back, we can look at the troop surge. And after 2007, al-Qaeda was essentially in ashes,” she said. “It was Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who then destroyed the entire rollout by wanting to pull out early, announcing their plans, ignoring intelligence and that is the reason why ISIS is a global issue and not a ...”
The CNN asked her if she meant “Barack Obama in 2004."
“I said afterwards,” she replied. “After the surge when al-Qaeda was in ashes. Entering Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — remember we weren’t even in Afghanistan by this time. Barack Obama went into Afghanistan creating another problem. It was Hillary Clinton and her incidents in Libya, which was also a reckless decision to create that vacuum. They armed the rebels and they're even funding them now.”
Blackwell went on to ask if Pierson was saying Obama took the United States into Afghanistan after 2009.
"What I'm saying is the policies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — that was Obama’s war, yes,” Pierson said.
On Wednesday, Trump said Obama is the founder of Daesh. “I would say the co-founder would be ‘Crooked’ Hillary Clinton,” he added.
On Thursday, Trump accused the Obama administration of not providing security to Americans from Daesh terrorists.
On Friday, Trump retracted his claim that Obama created the Takfiri group, tweeting that he was only being sarcastic.
On Friday afternoon, the former reality TV star said his initial remark wasn’t “that sarcastic, to be honest with you.”
Daesh terrorists, many of whom were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, control parts of Iraq and Syria. They have been engaged in crimes against humanity in areas under their control.
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