http://www.politico.com/blogs/politico-live/2014/09/gates-destroying-isil-is-an-ambitious-goal-195851.html By TARINI PARTI |
9/21/14 10:41 AM EDT
Calling President Barack Obama’s goal to destroy the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant “ambitious,” former Defense Secretary Robert Gates reiterated on Sunday that the president will need to have some combat troops on the ground.
“What I believe and what I suspect most military people believe is that given the mission the president has assigned, which is degrade and destroy, that to be able to do that some small number of American advisers, trainers, special forces and spotters for air controllers are going to be in harm’s way,” Gates said on ABC’s “This Week.”
“But what the administration is trying to communicate is that we are not going to send battalions, we are not going to send brigades, but that there will have to be with the mission the president has assigned, some American boots on the ground and in harms way.”
Gates went on to call the president’s goal to destroy ISIL “very ambitious.”
“I think that destroying (ISIL) is a very ambitious mission. I think our goal ought to be pushing (ISIL) back out of Iraq, denying them a place where they can have a permanent foothold…I think destroying – we’ve been at war with Al Qaeda for 13 years, we haven’t destroyed it,” he said.
Earlier on the same show, when asked about boots on the ground, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power said: “The president is relying on military advise from [Joint Chiefs of Staff] Chairman [Martin] Dempsey and from Secretary [Chuck] Hagel. They believe that the strategy the president has laid out can be successful in degrading and destroying ISIL. And there are troops on the ground. There are Iraqi troops. There are Kurdish troops. There are Syrian troops who have been fighting ISIL at great expense and great sacrifice; fighting on two fronts, fighting ISIL on the one hand and the regime on the other.”
