On Tuesday’s “Fox & Friends,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) reacted to a report that President Barack Obama missed up to 60 percent of his intelligence briefings published at Breitbart News on Tuesday.
According to Graham, even without those briefings, Obama should have been aware of the situation with ISIS based upon media reports alone.
“Well, does he have a television at the White House?” Graham said. “How could anybody miss this that is paying any attention at all? Sen. McCain and I said in October of 2013 watch out for ISIS. They’re filling in the vacuum created pie notby not supporting the Free Syrian Army. Let’s have a hearing when we get back in session, call the intel people in and say, ‘OK who is to blame here? Did you fail to tell our president the rise of ISIS/ISIL? Did you tell him anything about the degrading of the Iraqi army?’ The one thing that ticks me off is the surprise we have about the inability of the Iraqi army to take the fight to ISIL. If you’d followed anything at all after we left no troops behind, [Nouri al-] Maliki gutted the Iraqi army of any leadership. It wasn’t a surprise if you’re paying any attention what is going on in Iraq.”
Later in the segment, Graham criticized Obama’s tack toward ISIS and emphasized ultimately ground forces would be required.
“All I can say, Mr. President, you will never destroy ISIL without boots on the ground,” he added. “You are not going to get an Arab army to go in and defeat isil without substantial American help. And if you want to destroy ISIL inside of Iraq, you better rebuild the Iraqi army. You better get Sunnis peeled away from ISIL in the Anbar region. And you better arm the Kurds. You’re doing up in of this … The president says terrorists only understand the language of force. Well, he’s not fluent in that language. All he talks about is what we won’t do. You cannot destroy ISIL, which is an army without an army engaging ISIL.”
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