A "fundamental re-evaluation" of what the United States is doing in Syria and Iraq to fight the Islamic State needs to be done because "we are not degrading and ultimately destroying ISIS," Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain said Sunday.
"First of all, they're winning and we're not," McCain told CNN "State of the Union host Candy Crowley. "And the Iraqis are not winning, the Peshmerga, the Kurds are not winning."
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McCain said that he does not believe ISIS will take over Baghdad, "but I think they can take the airport, and that is crippling. I also think that they can infiltrate into Baghdad with explosives [and] suicide bombings."
The senator, who has all along said that airstrikes are not enough to combat the threat of ISIS, said Sunday that it needs to be recognized that this "present pinprick bombing is not working."
Further, he said, "you need more boots on the ground in the form of forward air controllers, special forces and other people like that."
Also, the Kurds, who are "using old weapons that are Russian vintage against ISIS" need to be armed, because ISIS is using captured U.S. weaponry.
"You have to do, I believe, what the Turks are asking and that is we create a buffer inside Syria and a no-fly zone," said McCain. "It's immoral to send Free Syrian Army people into the barrel bombing of [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad."
Airstrikes against ISIS are also enabling Assad, who has "intensified his strikes against the Free Syrian Army."
The Arizona senator emphasized that he is not calling to send battalions back into Iraq, "but we can do a lot more down at the operating level."
In addition, coalition forces should recognize that effectively, there is no border between Syria and Iraq.
"Why should we differentiate? Certainly Isis doesn't," he said. "Right now we are going to have to have effective air strikes. You can't have that without forward air controllers on the ground."
Airstrikes would not be effective for fighting ISIS in the Syrian border town of Kobani, which is an urban battle ground, said McCain.
"ISIS has adjusted to these air strikes," said McCain. "Fortunately for them we gave them two weeks' warning. And so this has to be a robust campaign with American air controllers and special forces on the ground supplying weapons to the Peshmerga and also supplying the Free Syrian Army and recognizing that you have to go after Isis and Bashar al-Assad at the same time or you will not succeed.
Meanwhile, the senator said he does not feel it is possible to protect civilians trapped in Kobani, which is near the Turkish border, and he feels "there will be a massacre."
And as ISIS gets stronger, the threat to the United States is growing, McCain said.
"That's what we have to understand and that's why tough decisions have to be made and not gradually," he said. "We have to completely revamp our strategy, which clearly is not succeeding."
In other matters on Sunday's show, McCain discussed the growing concerns over the spread of the Ebola virus in the wake of the discovery that a Texas health care worker who was in full protective gear while providing hospital care for an Ebola patient who later died, has
tested positive for the virus.
McCain said that the federal government needs to reassure his constituents and the United States by showing someone is in charge.
"There has to be some kind of czar," said McCain. "I think we have to look at people coming into the United States, not only at our airports here but the places where they leave from."
People are no longer comforted by being told there would never be Ebola in the United States, he said, "as obviously that's not correct."
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