A former high-ranking CIA official Friday accused President Barack Obama of failing to defend the United States from the threat of terrorism, and warned in the wake of the deadly truck attack in Nice, France that the Islamic State will continue launching attacks while it's losing battles in the Middle East
"They also have chemical weapons, [and] they seize those chemical weapons from the Syrians," Gary Berntsen, who was in the CIA's Directorate of Operations from 1982 to 2005, told
Fox News' "Fox & Friends" program about ISIS.
"I would see sort of an end-of-days scenario for them, that they will increase the lethality and the terror, and they [will] use those in the region. Less likely against us, but this is going to get very, very ugly."
No terrorist groups have claimed responsibility for the truck attack, which left at least 84 people dead, including
two Americans.
Berntsen, who endorsed Donald Trump earlier this year, however, said that Obama has "lost control of the Middle East. It's in flames. And that's what he will leave when he leaves office."
But before he leaves, Obama should declare war on ISIS so that people in the United States will know "that sacrifice and commitment is necessary to destroy ISIS," said Berntsen.
The president also should push to get Europeans to "step up their intel machines their programs, commit larger resources, and we all have to recognize this is going to be a minimum a decade fight," he continued.
But even if ISIS is destroyed, that will not be enough, Berntsen warned, telling the Fox program that the ISIS fighters will "cut their beards off and some may integrate back into al-Qaida. It's Islamic jihadist terrorism we're fighting."
Berntsen also ridiculed presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for her called-in comments to Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, when she said there is not enough cooperation between intelligence agencies in Europe and other countries.
"We have had liaison relationships with our European partners since World War II," Berntsen responded, calling her comments "nonsense."
The problem, he continued, is that the European countries are not committing enough to fight the problem, and refugees from the Middle East are overwhelming them.
"It's a failure of our European partners to step up to the plate and commit the resources they need, as they're failing to do on NATO, as well," he said. "They're not reaching their 2 percent, and you didn't hold them to account when you were in the job of secretary of state. This is just a talking point to avoid action."