Panetta: We should have left troops in Iraq

Another book from a former Obama administration official, and more potential heartburn for the White House.

Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta writes about how he and other Pentagon officials tried to persuade the White House that it need to keep a U.S. residual force in Iraq after combat operations ended in 2011.

"My fear, as I voiced to the President and others, was that if the country split apart or slid back into the violence that we'd seen in the years immediately following the U.S. invasion, it could become a new haven for terrorists to plot attacks against the U.S.," Panetta writes in Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace.

The book comes out Tuesday.

Timemagazine is running excerpts from the book by Panetta, who also served as CIA director for Obama.

Panetta writes that "the president's team at the White House pushed back" on requests to retain some U.S. troops in Iraq, and "and the differences occasionally became heated."

He adds: "Those on our side viewed the White House as so eager to rid itself of Iraq that it was willing to withdraw rather than lock in arrangements that would preserve our influence and interests."

In recent months, Obama has authorized new U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, to combat the rise of the Islamic State -- also known as ISIS -- and an al-Qaeda affiliated group.

"The news from Iraq bothered me to no end," Panetta writes. "In my view, the ISIS offensive in 2014 greatly increases the risk that Iraq will become al-Qaeda's next safe haven. That is exactly what it had in Afghanistan pre-9/11."

Previous books by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates -- Panetta's predecessor -- and ex-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have also included criticism of the Obama administration.