GOP presidential candidate Lindsey Graham had a warning for the United States Monday: "If you don't take the [ISIS] caliphate down, they are coming here."
"Nobody should be comforted" by what President Barack Obama said in his Oval Office address on Sunday, the South Carolina senator told
Fox News' "America's Newsroom" program. "He has no strategy, it's a new coat of paint on an old idea. He has the credibility of Baghdad Bob."
Graham told show host Martha MacCallum that he has just returned from his 36th trip to Iraq, and matters there are better than the United States realizes.
"We are making some technical successes, but there is not a snowball's chance in Hell we'll destroy ISIL before he [Obama] leaves office," said Graham. "There is no ground game in Syria. What did I say two years ago? We need a regional army with American forces integrated. There is nobody left in Syria to train."
The people who are being trained are Kurds, he explained who have "no desire" to go into Iraq or take the ISIS caliphate down.
"In Iraq the most dominant ground forces are Shia militias dominated by Iran," said Graham. "They can't liberate Mosul...Mosul is a city with a million people. There is no way with this construct we are going to take Mosul out inside of Iraq."
Graham continued that he would put 10,000 U.S. soldiers in to train a regional army of 80,000 to 100,000, which would consist of 90 percent from the region and 10 percent from the United States to go in to destroy the ISIS caliphate through a land invasion.
"If you don't do that you will get attacked here," Graham said. "This is the centerpiece of why I'm running for president."
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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