Gates: Likelihood of ‘Significant Military Formations’ from Arab Allies in Fight Against ISIS ‘Very Remote’
(CNSNews.com) – Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates told “CBS This Morning” on Thursday that the likelihood of “significant military formations” from countries like Saudi Arabia or Turkey on the ground in Iraq or Syria to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) “is very remote.”
“The idea that you’re going to get significant military formations from Saudi Arabia or Turkey or other countries to go on the ground in Iraq or Syria to take on ISIS I think is, the likelihood of that being done is very remote,” he said.
Gates was asked about GOP presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) proposal that there should be a Sunni ground force from Arab allies.
“I think the odds are low. The truth is we are working with some Sunni ground forces, and those are the tribes in the area of Iraq and Afghanistan that have not been taken over by ISIS and that are defending their home villages, their home area, and the more that we can support those people, provide them arms, provide them with training and help, the more we should do,” Gates said.
Gates said the U.S. should “loosen the rules of engagement for the forces that we already have in Iraq and think about sending some modest increased number.”
“We need to let our Special Operations forces be more active. We need to implant or imbed advisers and trainers with the Iraqi forces down to the battalion level as well as with Sunni tribes and with the Kurds who are fighting. We need forward air controllers to help make the air attacks more effective and more precise, and that might require some modest increase in forces, but not a large one I think,” he said.
“I think we need to assess whether our intelligence operations there are as aggressive as they might be in terms of getting inside ISIS or in terms of sabotage and other covert operations,” Gates said.
He said the president and Congress should ask the director of the National Security Agency what capabilities NSA has to track ISIS that the agency is prevented from using now and what those capabilities would “give us in terms of added capability of tracking potential terror plots in the United States or elsewhere in the world.”
“If he says there are capabilities that can be helpful, we ought to take advantage of that,” Gates said, and it may be time for a “heart-to-heart talk between the president and some of the leaders of the tech companies in terms of them providing some help to the government on some of these highly sophisticated encryption devices.”
As the Wall Street Journal reported [1] Wednesday, FBI Director James Comey said the bureau has been “stymied” by ISIS’s use of encryption.”
“Germany-based Telegram, which was co-founded by the ‘Mark Zuckerberg of Russia,’ Pavel Durov, announced [2] on Wednesday that it had blocked 78 ISIS-related channels across 12 languages on its service. The company says it was ‘disturbed’ to learn that ISIS was using its platform to ‘spread their propaganda,’” Fortune magazine reported [3] on Thursday.
Gates said the latest attack in Paris shows that the reach of ISIS goes “far beyond the Syrian, Iraqi areas that their troops control,” and while the killing of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks, “is obviously important and a good thing, the truth is, this snake has many heads” and despite this “setback” for ISIS, “the truth is I have a feeling that there are many others prepared to take his place.”
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