Legislation introduced by Republicans in both the House and Senate on Wednesday to give official war authorization in the fight to the Islamic State (ISIS) is "way overdue" and should be passed, retired U.S. Army Col. David Hunt, told Newsmax TV.
"Congress needs to take responsibility," Hunt told host Steve Malzberg on Wednesday's "America Talks Live." "We've been fighting in Afghanistan for almost 16 years, 13 in Iraq. We just got 10,000 soldiers now. Between Iraq and Syria we've crossed the border into Syria, so yeah, we need to do that."
Hunt – author of the new military thriller "Without Mercy," written with R.J. Pineiro and published by Forge – also praised a report in The Wall Street Journal that Trump has given the CIA authority to conduct lethal drone strikes again by removing limits former Barack Obama placed on the agency.
And he is also pleased with Trump's pledge to give $24 billion to the military for a long-needed facelift.
"What we've got is age-old equipment. The A-10 is a great plane but it was built in 1978 . . . The U.S. Coast Guard has got old, old stuff and these are great organizations," said Hunt, a former special operations, counterterrorism and intelligence official. "We've got ships that need to be built and planes that need to be updated."
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Hunt's new book concerns ISIS detonating nuclear weapons in two key American strongholds, which plunges the nation into chaos and has the CIA scrambling to prevent a third tragedy.
"This is an apocalyptic thriller with terrorism as the center of it," Hunt said. "It's the best one of its kind out there. The combat scenes are with Special Forces contractors that's taken right out the stuff that I've done."
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