Page 14 - December 2011 News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Them now? >> that's a great question. there were 10,000 american troops in iraq until december 2011. boom, they were all gone. >> the problem is that the obama administration was committed to a timeline inclined to leave before the first day of 2012, and we did. and once we did, there was a tsunami. >> professor walid phares is also co secretary-general of the transatlantic parliamentary group on terrorism. the author of numerous books and middle east terrorism analyst for fox news. >> everything in iraq collapsed because of the way we left iraq. >> when i was out there last year and this year...

People's will, i think they can only take one decision, annul the results of an election and hold a new one." gorbachev said that. as thousands and then tens of thousands of russians took to the streets saying "russia without putin." this was a big deal. this was maybe going to be the end of putin. i mean, people wouldn't even have to overthrow him. this was december, 2011, he was about to stand for president in march just a few months later and there's the country rising up against him, feeling like he's this corrupt thief who just rigged the election to stay in power and even still was only ...

>> reporter: the cold and the snow didn't stop them. the massive show of force on moscow's streets didn't, either. police estimate a crowd of 25,000, the largest political demonstration since the early '90s. "russia without putin" they defiantly chanted. >> those were days of protests. days of protests. it was a different -- three different report there is from "nbc nightly news." over december, early days of december, 2011, the election was december 4, the protests started december 5. that was five years ago, 2011. these protests were really big. some of the biggest protests against any russi...

Parliament. and that was very embarrassing to vladimir putin because that election was supposed to be the runup to him running for president again. that election should have been a moment of triumph for him. that election was just a few months before he was going to take this historic step of regaining the presidency. it was embarrassing to him that his party lost all those seats. his party got rejected. the number of seats they held in parliament dropped by dozens because of this election result in december, 2011. that was not what he wanted at all as he was ready -- getting ready to go be pr...

He didn't like necessarily not being president of russia, even though he was still running the country. it was bugging him. those four years not being president, that was enough. by 2011, he was already making plans that he would like his old job title back, please. he would like to be called president again. so he's making plans to do that. december, 2011, he's preparing to run again for president, to retake the title of president and while he was preparing to run for president again, something bad happened to vladimir putin. because this was the parliamentary election result from december, 2...