Claiming Obama’s Iraq Withdrawal Created ISIS Problem Is Absurd; Here Are the Top 5 Reasons Why

... accounting for unrecorded deaths, but the trends in the levels of violence are still very clear). 4.) When ISIS Rose to Prominence In Syria, Iraq Was Experiencing Record-Lows in Violence Iraq Body Count There were still over 45,000 U.S. troops in Iraq when the Syrian Civil War broke out in March 2011, a level that was maintained through at least part of September, but U.S. troops did not complete their pullout until the end of that year, so one cannot even make the argument that the U.S. withdrawal had anything ...