Article snippet: Mattis recalled being in Baghdad for a change of command ceremony in late summer 2010, a time when Al Qaeda had been driven “to its knees.” He wrote: The Obama White House supported the incumbent prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, despite him garnering less votes than the opposition in recent elections. Mattis said he was opposed to backing Maliki. Mattis recalled having dinner after the change of command ceremony with Biden, then-U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Jim Jeffrey, White House staffers, and U.S. generals. He told Biden, “Prime Minister Maliki is highly untrustworthy, Mr. Vice President.” He wrote: Mattis said Central Command, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the new Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wanted to leave some U.S. forces in Iraq. He wrote that then-Centcom Commander Army Gen. Lloyd Austin wanted to leave 18,000 U.S. troops there, and he agreed with that number. But the Obama administration was determined to draw down all U.S. troops, he wrote. He recalled Obama saying in the fall of 2012: “I said I’d end the war in Iraq. I ended it.” “Rhetoric doesn’t end conflicts,” Mattis wrote. As intelligence assessments predicted, Iraq “slipped back into escalating violence,” and “the medieval scourge called ISIS rose like a phoenix and swept across western Iraq and eastern Syria, routing the Iraqi Army and establishing its murderous caliphate.” “Supporting a sectarian Iraqi prime minister and withdrawing all U.S... Link to the full article to read more