ISIS has not been "contained," California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Monday, striking back at President Barack Obama's comments last Friday, and she hopes NATO will join the fight against the jihadist insurgents.
"I have never been more concerned," the senator, who is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on her noon show,
"Andrea Mitchell Reports." "ISIL is not contained. ISIL is expanding. They just put out a video saying it is their intent to attack this country. I think we have to be prepared."
And there is only one way to defeat ISIS, she continued, and that is "by taking them out, because they are growing."
The insurgents are in "more than a dozen countries now," Feinstein continued. "They are sophisticated. They have apps to communicate on that cannot be pierced even with a court order. So they have a kind of secret way of being able to conduct operations and operational planning. So we should take this very, very seriously."
Further, the senator said that she's not a military expert, but she believes
far more than 50 Special Forces troops are needed on the ground to defeat the threat.
"We need to be able to work with Russia and Iran, if they will work with us, in the Syrian area," Feinstein said. "We need to be able to get a political solution to Assad so that all of everyone's attention can be directed to ISIL. Look, ISIL took down a major aircraft, 224 people. It had a major attack in Beirut, 40 people killed ... they are on the March. It is important to recognize this and prepare to deal with it with action."
But airstrikes are not enough, she continued.
"We will have to listen very carefully to our military people and ask for the kind of precise military strategy and tactics that might be able to really contain ISIL and defeat it," Feinstein said.
In addition, Feinstein said she is concerned that there is a "broken passport system."
"We've got 45 million stolen passports floating around," she said. "We've got international travel documents floating around. We have a Visa waiver program that allows somebody if they come back from Syria to France to come into this country. All of these things have to be explored and changed. It has to be done quickly."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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