Mike Pompeo reacts to Washington Post headline on Baghdadi raid
Mike Pompeo reacts to Washington Post headline on Baghdadi raid
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo praised all involved in the raid that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and slammed The Washington Post for one of its headlines about the terrorist's death.
Pompeo told "The Story" on Wednesday The Post's billing of Baghdadi as an "austere religious scholar at helm of Islamic State" was a "sick" description.
"Boy, they've lost their way," he said of the paper, which has on several occasions drawn President Trump's ire.
"It was sick to do that -- this is a man who'd killed hundreds."
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Pompeo pointed to slain American aid worker Kayla Mueller, who was held captive by ISIS and repeatedly raped by Baghdadi while in captivity.
He praised Mueller's parents for their strength in sharing their story with host Martha MacCallum on Tuesday's program, adding tat it's one of hundreds that prove Baghdadi should only be considered an evil terrorist who is thankfully dead.
"To suggest somehow that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was anything other than a murderous terrorist is truly sick," Pompeo said.
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In addition, Pompeo called the raid on Baghdadi's compound in Idlib, Syria a "remarkable undertaking" and thanked the U.S. military and all of the American allies who helped bring the terror leader to justice.
"This was a bold, proper, appropriate undertaking that President Trump green-lighted," the former Kansas Republican congressman said.
However, Pompeo criticized former Obama administration official Susan Rice, who told CBS News on Sunday that former President Barack Obama should have been notified by the Trump administration as a courtesy prior to the raid.
"For those who want to complain from the previous administration about what's going on in Syria, that's bizarre," he said.
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"They unleashed this -- they allowed ISIS to take all the real estate. For them to critique anything that President Trump has done in his noble effort to take down ISIS in western Iraq and in Syria -- it's outrageous."
On Sunday's "Face the Nation," Rice told host Margaret Brennan there is a "tradition of common courtesy of presidents informing their predecessors of things of significance like this."
However, she also said there is "no reason" she herself should have been informed either way.