Special to WorldTribune.com
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said that Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) emerged on Hillary Clinton’s watch as secretary of state and that she “could be considered a founding member” of the terrorist organization.
“She had her chance to (rally people against ISIL) – she helped create ISIL,” Giuliani said on March 24 in an interview on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” during a segment on the Brussels attacks and the Obama administration’s response to them.
“By being part of an administration that withdrew from Iraq. By being part of an administration that let (Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki) run Iraq into the ground, so you forced the Shi’ites to make a choice. By not intervening in Syria at the proper time. By being part of an administration that drew twelve lines in the sand and made a joke out of it,” Guiliani said.
O’Reilly said that, as secretary of state, Clinton was not ultimately responsible for the decisions in Iraq, and that the most she could have done to compel Obama to change his policy was resign.
“Which is what a patriot does,” Giuliani responded.
Clinton on March 24 delivered another in a long line of generic, canned responses on the global terrorism threat.
“The threat we face from terrorism is real, it is urgent and it knows no boundaries,” Clinton said.
Also, without offering any strategies or detailed policies of her own, Clinton criticized the foreign policy and anti-terror strategies offered by GOP candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. She said that Cruz’s call for increased policing and monitoring of Muslim communities is “wrong, it is counterproductive, it is dangerous,” and compared it to “treating American Muslims like criminals” and “racially profiling.”
Clinton responded to Trump’s proposal to have the United States withdraw from NATO, saying “if Mr. Trump gets his way, it will be like Christmas in the Kremlin.”
Analysts say Clinton may know a little about gifts to Russia as she in March 2009 famously presented Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov with a “reset button.”
Giuliani complimented both Trump and Cruz for their approach to fighting ISIL.
“I think Trump and Cruz probably have been the most specific on it, as specific as you would expect at this level of the campaign,” the former mayor said. “There’s no question they will take the war to ISIL – exactly how they’d do it, they probably don’t know yet, until they get in there.”