Leon Panetta on world's 'dangerous threats'

For a man who has taken a hatchet to the Obama Administration, Leon Panetta wields a disarmingly broad smile.

In the course of our 10-minute interview, the former Secretary of Defense accuses US President Barack Obama of not doing enough to keep US forces in Iraq, of failing to lead for the past two years and of sending the wrong message to the world.

The criticism is tough, but somehow Mr Panetta's trademark twinkle is never far below the surface.

He makes it clear in his book and in our interview that keeping a US troop presence of some 10,000 in Iraq would have given us a "better chance" of not ending up where we are today with Islamic State.

He also admits that he would not have predicted even a year ago that IS would be in this strong a position.

But perhaps most telling about the state of the world we live in today was Mr Panetta's parting remark: "We are living in a world in which I've never seen as many dangerous threats confronting this world from Isis [IS] to N Korea, to Russia to China to cyber attacks to Iran... We are confronting a very dangerous world."

With all that to dwell on, thank God he has a big smile.