“Ideas like that are certainly worth looking at,” Walker told radio host Chris Salcedo when asked about comments made by former U.N. ambassador John Bolton about dividing up the country.

“Before you start talking about dividing up anything you have to get control over there. If you have Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds as you mentioned, distinctive categories, but the Sunnis have to be the freedom-loving ones, responsible ones, they can’t be the more radical elements of the Islamic State.”

Walker said many of the current problems in Iraq exist because the United States “backed away” from the country instead of “securing and maintaining the peace that was won.”