Santorum: Obama, Hillary created ISIS

WASHINGTON _ Republican presidential candidates urged greater confrontation with terrorists and a clampdown on immigration, while slamming President Barack Obama, following Friday evening’s terror assaults in Paris.

He said he would be the best choice to lead the country because of his experience as Virginia’s governor during the 2001 terrorist attacks and accused Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of failing in the fight against terrorists tied to “radical Islamism”.

“I am angry that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton declared victory in Iraq in 2011, abandoned all of our hard-won gains for political expediency and contrary to the advice of every general that spoke with them, thus leaving vast swaths of territory and too much weaponry to be gobbled up by ISIS”, Fiorina told those at the Sunshine Summit, a political gathering of Florida Republicans.

She also said she would enter the White House with a plan to confront terrorism.

The Kentucky senator says Republicans and Democrats alike are to blame for not reining in government spending and allowing the $19 trillion debt to keep rising. But he added that more needs to be done to “completely decapitate” their operations.

Marco Rubio said that the attacks are a “wake up call”, and that “either they win or we win”.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who led a New Hampshire crowd in an impromptu prayer Friday night when news of the attacks broke, said in a statement that the US should invoke the mutual defense article of the North Atlantic Treaty, increase collaboration by intelligence agencies with allies, and “stem the flow of refugees into Europe” by creating “safe havens for civilian refugees on Syria’s borders”.

Sen. Rand Paul, who has often stood alone in the GOP field in opposing increased foreign intervention, tweeted his condolences and said the US “must stand united with France”.

Jindal noted on Saturday that French President Francois Hollande immediately closed his nation’s borders after the attacks.

“They were injured by radical Islamic terrorism, an evil that is at war with the people of America, that is at war with freedom-loving people across the globe”.

Jindal also said he would not rule out the possibility of deploying USA troops to halt the growing influence of ISIS and Iran across the Middle East.

“If I were one of the leaders of the global jihadist movement and I didn’t infiltrate that group of people with my people, I – that would be almost malpractice”, Ben Carson said at the Sunshine Summit.

Santorum, a former US senator from Pennsylvania, said America must elect a “wartime president” and that he’s qualified.

Santorum is speaking at a presidential candidate event organized by the Florida Republican Party.

“We have leadership who doesn’t know what they’re doing”, said businessman Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, who addressed a rally Saturday in Beaumont, Texas.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said the “the bumbling foreign policy” of Obama and Clinton – now the front-runner for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination – “has put this country at risk as it has not been since 9/11”.

He later told reporters that IS is fighting the United States and winning because there’s no plan to take land back from the group.