August 30, 2014, 06:43 pm
Feinstein: Obama ‘too cautious’ on ISIS
By Martin Matishak
The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee said that President Obama has perhaps been “too cautious” in confronting the militant group the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
“I think I've learned one thing about this president, and that is he's very cautious. Maybe in this instance, too cautious,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said during an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” when asked if Obama admitting the U.S. doesn’t have a strategy yet for battling the group inside Syria projected weakness.
The senior lawmaker said she understood the Defense and State department have been busy hammering out a strategy, “so hopefully, those plans will coalesce into a strategy that can encourage that coalition from Arab nations” such a Jordan and Lebanon who are “at jeopardy.”
“So there is good reason for people to come together now and begin to approach this as a very real threat, that it in fact is,” according to Feinstein.
She also strongly disagreed with the president’s assessment from earlier this year that ISIS is a “JV team.”
“I think it's a major varsity team, if you want to use those kinds of monikers. But I see nothing that compares with its viciousness,” Feinstein said.
Citing her history of monitoring non-state actors and extremist organizations as a member of the Intelligence panel, she said that ISIS is “really the first group that has the wherewithal in terms of financing, the fighting machine in terms of a structure -- a heavy equipment, heavy explosives, the ability to move quickly.”
Feinstein noted that ISIS crossed the border from Syria into Iraq “before we even knew it happened.”
“So this is a group of people who are extraordinarily dangerous. And they'll kill with abandon,” she warned.
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