A Democratic senator has criticized calls by Republicans to invade Iraq in an attempt to stem the recent surge of violence there.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif) told CBS's “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the United States should not return to the policy that already led to the current crisis in Iraq.
"The fact is, what we're seeing now is an outgrowth of that bad policy the neocons got us in, that crowd, on false pretense that said, go in there. And, as a result, ISIS was born. Let's face that fact," she said about the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, which has started a conflict against the Iraqi government over the past two weeks. The Takfiri militants have captured several key Iraqi cities, so far.
"It was [former] Vice President [Dick] Cheney and Condi Rice working for George W. Bush and Rumsfeld and all those folks -- that's just like, you know, a nightmare come back to haunt me, just frankly -- who are basically telling us, get right back in there again. The American people don't want it. The president doesn't want us in," she said.
Cheney on Sunday called on President Barack Obama to invade Iraq while criticizing the president’s policies in that country.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) also rejected Cheney’s criticism saying many critics who blame the president for the recent crisis in Iraq should take a look in the mirror.
"I don't blame President Obama," Paul told NBC News. "Has he really got the solution? Maybe there is no solution."
Paul said critics of Obama should ask the same questions of those who supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq: "Were they right in their predictions? Were there weapons of mass destruction there? Was the war won in 2005, when many of those people said it was won?"
Conservative hawks say Obama invited the chaos in Iraq by withdrawing all of America's troops in 2011.