Fresh from a visit to the Middle East where he saw ISIS influences growing, Sen. John McCain on Wednesday condemned President Obama’s lack of a strategy to snuff out the terror group and warned that a post-Paris attack was coming in days.
“I guarantee you in the next few days we will hear of another bombing somewhere,” McCain told reporters in pleading for stronger action, and more troops, in the war on ISIS.
McCain, chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, has been calling for more ground troops to fight ISIS, charging that an exclusive air war won’t do the trick.
At a media breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, he charged that that the administration not only lacks a strategy to fight the terror group, but has been asleep at the wheel when picking obvious targets like captured fuel depots from which oil is put in tankers and sold for money to conduct war.
A former CIA director last week said that the fuel centers were not targeted because the administration was concerned about the environmental impact of spilled oil and gas.
After last month’s Paris attacks, the administration started to hit tankers, though drivers were given some warning of the bombings.
While the targets have been known for a while, McCain asked, “why did we wait a year? Why did we wait a year, for a year we have been ‘degrading and destroying ISIS.’ What the hell were we doing for the whole year?”
He then revealed that the administration was sitting on its weapons.
“I’ll tell you what we were doing. We’re having about 60 to 70 percent of the planes return to base from their missions with the weapons they took off with. It was almost a joke,” he said.
He added that during his trip to Iraq, he heard frustrations from American military officers about the rules of engagement.
“They are very frustrated, they are very frustrated…they’re not happy because of the restraints that have been placed on them,” he said.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
