A telling exchange between Sen. John McCain and Defense Secretary Ashton Carter at Wednesday’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing revealed that a member of the president’s own cabinet disagrees with his assumption that ISIS is “contained.”
SEN. MCCAIN: “Mr. Secretary, on the first of December before the House Armed Services Committee, Congressman Forbes asked General Dunford: ‘Have we currently contained ISIL?’ General Dunford: ‘We have not contained ISIL.’ Mr. Secretary do you agree with General Dunford?”
SECRETARY CARTER: “I agree with what General Dunford said. Yes.”
Carter also did not dismiss the need to send ground troops to Iraq in order to destroy the terror group's momentum in the Middle East, and that the U.S. may need to send attack helicopters to help Iraqi forces defeat ISIS. Yet, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest urged that the president has not yet approved that plan.
Prior to Wednesday’s hearing, a White House-sanctioned U.S. intelligence report warned that ISIS will grow worldwide unless we recover key territories from them. Members of the media suggested that ISIS was “laughing” at the president’s announcing we are going to stay the course in our counterterrorism efforts, meaning no ground troops. Meanwhile, leading Democrats have more or less told the president he is wrong to believe the terror network is in retreat. As Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said, the threat of ISIS has gotten “worse.” Now, with Secretary Carter’s admittance, even the president’s own cabinet does not believe him.
Their claims, unlike the president’s, are backed up by some frightening statistics. Katie reported on Tuesday that the number of number of foreign fighters joining ISIS has doubled. Then there’s this:
Another alarming statistic that keeps coming up is that fact that there are twice as many United Kingdom Muslims fighting for ISIS that there are serving in the British armed forces.
A somber look at the resulting death tolls of the recent terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino suggest this “jayvee team” has no plans to slow its barbaric march.
The president’s naïveté only emboldens the terrorists to act more callously. We need a leader who knows how to take action. Our current commander-in-chief cannot even put a name to the carnage.