Hillary Clinton hits back at Jeb Bush in Iraq row

Democratic presidential hopeful Hilary Clinton has hit back at one of her Republican rivals, Jeb Bush, over who is responsible for instability in Iraq.

On Tuesday Mr Bush accused the Obama administration of a “premature withdrawal” of US forces from Iraq in 2011, with “grievous” costs.

Ms Clinton replied by saying it was Mr Bush’s brother George W Bush who, as president, negotiated a US withdrawal.

The US-led war in 2003 has been followed by years of turmoil.

Mr Bush called the withdrawal of US forces in 2011 a “fatal error”, destabilising the nation and setting the stage for the rise of Islamic State militants.

“So eager to be the history-makers, they failed to be the peacemakers,” Mr Bush said of Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton, who was Barack Obama’s secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.

“Rushing away from danger can be every bit as unwise as rushing into danger,” he told a rally in California.

On the campaign trail in Iowa on Saturday, Mrs Clinton responded by saying Mr Bush “should present the entire picture. [That]… includes the agreement George W Bush made with the Maliki government in Iraq that set the end of 2011 as the date to withdraw American troops.”

“I can only wonder whether he either did not know that or thought that other people would not be reminded of that,” she went on.

Earlier in the campaign Jeb Bush was ridiculed for struggling to say whether he would have approved the Iraq invasion “knowing what we know now”.

At first, he said he would, then he said he wouldn’t engage in “hypotheticals” and finally he announced he would not have.

Mrs Clinton herself voted in favour of the invasion in Iraq in 2002, and has since both defended the decision and acknowledged she “got it wrong”.

Source: BBC