Hillary: ISIS More Advanced, Richer 'Than Al-Qaida Ever Was'

The Islamic State (ISIS) has the potential to be more dangerous to the United States than al-Qaida if its advance is not stopped, said former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The potential 2016 presidential candidate said President Barack Obama made the right decision to launch a military offensive against the extremist group in Syria and Iraq, The Washington Post reported.

"It's a serious threat because this is the best-funded, most professional, expansionist jihadist military force that we have ever seen," Clinton told the Economic Club of Chicago, according to the Post. "This is far more advanced and far richer than al-Qaida ever was."

She added that the group "will attempt to launch attacks against Western targets if it has the ability to do so."

Clinton also predicted that Congress would take "some kind of legislative action" when it reconvenes after the November election.

Last week, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta revealed that Obama ignored his and Clinton's advice to arm Syrian rebels in 2012 as a means of preventing the rise of the militant group.

This summer, Clinton openly blamed Obama's foreign policy for creating the conditions for the jihadists to take over much of Iraq.

She said in an interview published in The Atlantic in August, that it was Obama's refusal to "build up a credible fighting force" which led to the rise of the Islamic State.
 
"The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against [Syrian leader Bashar] Assad — there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle — the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled," Clinton said.

But last month she downplayed divisions, saying she backed Obama's strategy in Syria to arm rebels and conduct airstrikes.

"Whatever the debates might have been before, this is a threat to the region and beyond," Clinton said, according to CNN. "The situation now is demanding a response and we are seeing a very robust response."

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