The United States needs to begin airstrikes on Iraq right away to stop the growing unrest in Iraq, Sen. John McCain said.
"If we don't do anything, then you will see the Iranians come in — and they are already in," the Arizona Republican, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, told Jeanine Pirro Saturday on her Fox News Program. "You will see them in greater numbers if Maliki feels he cannot get help from the U.N. or other allies."
McCain was referring to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The Sunni militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have captured large swaths of territory north of Baghdad since Tuesday. Their advance on Baghdad was sending food prices dramatically higher and prompting tighter security in the city of 7 million people.
Urgent: Do You Approve of Obama's Handling of Foreign Policy? Vote Here
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Saturday ordered the USS George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier into the Persian Gulf as President Barack Obama weighed possible military action in Iraq. Officials said the move would give the president more flexibility if military action were needed to protect American citizens and interests in Baghdad.
McCain told Pirro that he had no doubt that ISIS would plan attacks against the United States.
"It has everything to do with the threat that they pose. ISIS is the worst of the worst. Even one of the extremist groups can't stand them."
The senator continued his call for a new national security team at the White House in light of the spiraling Iraqi developments.
"It has been a complete failure," said of Obama's foreign policy, especially since the president pulled out all U.S. troops in late 2011. "We could have left troops behind. We could have left them as we did in Japan. Germany, Bosnia. As we did in Korea as a stabilizing force.
"I predicted when he pulled them all out that it would be doomed to failure. I predicted it three times."
McCain was among the many Senate Republicans who warned of a militant resurgence in Iraq in letters to the president in 2009, 2010, and last year.
A total of 4,486 U.S. soldiers died in the Iraq War, which lasted from March 2003 to December 2011.
"It's been an utter and total failure both in Iraq — and now it's going to be in Afghanistan," he told Pirro. "We need a new team. We need the ones that won the war. We had that war won.
"We blew it — and we took everybody out. We didn't leave a residual force behind," McCain said.
"That's a tragedy because we lost over 4,000 brave young Americans."
Urgent: Do You Approve of Obama's Handling of Foreign Policy? Vote Here