White House press secretary Josh Earnest on Tuesday defended President Obama’s Monday comment that he doesn’t have a “complete strategy” for boosting Iraqi troop recruitment, a line many Republicans jumped on and touted as an admission that Obama has no plan at all for fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
During a press conference at the end of the G7 conference in Germany Monday, Obama was discussing problems with the Iraqi military’s ability to recruit Sunni tribes to its ranks. “We don’t yet have a complete strategy because it requires commitments on the part of the Iraqis,” he said in the context of a discussion on recruitment problem facing the central government of Iraq.
Critics of the administration, including Republican leaders in Congress and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who is running for the GOP presidential nomination, seized on the comments, arguing that the remarks echoed similar comments Obama made in August that his administration had yet to devise a comprehensive strategy to take on the Islamic State.
One White House reporter acknowledged that the president made the comment as part of a discussion about the narrower issue of Iraqi military recruitment failures, and Earnest said the president was being “very direct” and speaking about something the administration has acknowledged for weeks.
“This is an example of the president saying, ‘Let’s make sure that there [are] lessons learned — let’s try to ramp up the numbers and capacity of those [forces] in Anbar province,'” he said. “How exactly to implement that is something we’re still working through. We need the Iraqi government to do a better job in sending recruits through the program.”
Obama acknowledged Monday that the Pentagon is trying to come up with a plan to boost Iraqi security forces recruitment of Sunnis tribal members, which he said is “particularly important” to fight the Islamic State and stop the extremist group’s advances and support in heavily Sunni Iraqi populations.
The Pentagon said Tuesday it is close to sending the White House a new plan for training Iraqi forces, including options for the U.S. military to directly train Sunni tribes.
The move would follow U.S. distribution of weapons to Iraqi security forces after months of complaints that tens of thousands of M-16 rifles, mortars and other equipment the U.S. has provided was going to Shi’a militias instead, a development first reported by the Washington Examiner.
