President Donald Trump may want to reconsider his inclusion of Iraq in a short-lived immigration ban he imposed on seven mostly Muslim countries, former congressman and U.S. Army captain Michael Patrick Flanagan tells Newsmax TV.
Flanagan believes the Trump administration, now rewriting a travel-restriction plan after a federal judge struck down the commander-in-chief's first executive order last month, should be aware of benefits of excluding Iraq.
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"I would tell you, politically, personally, the Iraqi people like us very much and they like the fact that we are considered their ally and they consider themselves our ally," Flanagan said Thursday to Miranda Khan on "America Talks Live."
"Whatever the Abadi government does, the people themselves think a great deal of the United States and the people themselves were mortally wounded, they were very upset at us placing them in the same box with Yemen and other failed states.
"They really didn't grasp the reason why and I'm not sure they still do. Of course, we did it because their borders have become porous, because their country is under enormous stress and I blame Obama for that. That shouldn't be true, but it is true."
Flanagan, who heads the Washington D.C. lobbying firm Flanagan Consulting, said the problem is that the Iraqi borders are "porous" allowing a dangerous flow in and out.
"Because their borders are porous we don't know how other people are getting official Iraqi documents and then those documents then lead to official American documents," he told Khan.
"So having them included in the first place might have been prudent, might have been smart, but it was done indelicately and we offended a lot of people who like us very much and leaving them off this time, if they think they can do it, I think is a very good thing and I think it's wise of them to do that."
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