Thiessen: We wouldn't have needed a Baghdadi mission if Obama and Biden hadn't withdrawn troops in 2011

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Marc Thiessen: Joe Biden's criticisms of Trump's military raid which killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi are "wrong"

Marc Thiessen, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, said President Trump "deserves enormous credit for the Baghdadi operation."

Former Vice President Joe Biden's criticisms of the military raid that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi are "wrong," Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen said Thursday.

In an interview on MSNBC, Biden said the raid that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi happened in spite of President Trump's actions.

"The military is incredible. They’ve done just a phenomenal job and I have great faith in them. But my lord, the president should stay in his lane and listen to the military and not get off on these rants he goes on...Now he is saying we are keeping troops in Iraq to protect the oil fields and that we are going to take the oil. That’s like putting up 500 banners...recruiting for ISIS," Biden claimed.

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Appearing on "Fox & Friends" with host Steve Doocy, the former speechwriter for President George W. Bush said the president "deserves enormous credit for the Baghdadi operation."

"This was a very high-risk mission," said Thiessen. "They had to fly hundreds of miles into Al Qaeda-controlled territory. The helicopters could have been shot down. Any number of things could have gone horribly wrong, and Donald Trump would have gotten the blame."

He invited Doocy to think back to "what the Desert One disaster did to Jimmy Carter's presidency," adding, "you know a president takes a big risk when they order an operation like this."

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Thiessen added that Biden was the only person in President Obama's national security team who opposed the Osama Bin Laden operation.

"But," he said, "it's fair to ask, 'What would Joe Biden have done if he were President of the United States? And, we had a little bit of an inkling because he opposed the raid that got Osama Bin Laden."

In Fox News op-ed, Thiessen wrote: "At the moment America had the man responsible for the 9/11 attacks in her sights, Biden was worried about politics, the absolute last thing a commander in chief should be thinking about in such circumstances."

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Biden also took aim at the president's decision to pull troops from the Syrian border with Turkey — a decision that Thiessen agreed with.

"Joe Biden is the guy who led the effort to withdraw all of our troops from Iraq against the advice of commanders...he said it was the proudest moment of his life," Thiessen said exasperatedly. "That's what led to the rise of ISIS in the first place. There would have been no need for a Baghdadi mission if it hadn't been for Joe Biden withdrawing all of our troops in 2011."