Bush links Clinton to rise of Islamic State

BURBANK, Calif. — Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush will step up his criticism of Hillary Rodham Clinton and her tenure as secretary of state on Tuesday, arguing in a speech on foreign policy the Democratic front-runner shares in the mistakes that he says led to the rise of the Islamic State.

The former Florida governor will also call for a renewed sense of U.S. leadership in the Middle East, which he says is needed to defeat the militant group and an ideology that "is, to borrow a phrase, the focus of evil in the modern world."

"The threat of global jihad, and of the Islamic State in particular, requires all the strength, unity and confidence that only American leadership can provide," Bush will say, according to excerpts of his remarks as prepared for delivery.

In a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., Bush plans to tie the rise of the militant Sunni group to the departure of U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011. The Islamic State occupies a large swath of Iraq and Syria, and has a presence elsewhere in the Mideast.

"ISIS grew while the United States disengaged from the Middle East and ignored the threat," Bush will say. "And where was Secretary of State Clinton in all of this?

Clinton, he says, "stood by as that hard-won victory by American and allied forces was thrown away. In all her record-setting travels, she stopped by Iraq exactly once."

Check back with Arkansas Online for updates, and read Wednesday’s Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.

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