House Intelligence Chairman Mike Rogers pleaded with President Barack Obama on Monday to quit playing golf and lead the country with a better solution than working with Iran on the crisis in Iraq.
"'Mr. President, please come back from the golf course,'" Rogers said on "America's Forum" on
Newsmax TV. "'We need you. We need a decision now. We need to sit down. We ought to be spending very long days in situation rooms to try to get to a place that really does work for American national security interests."
Secretary of State
John Kerry said the United States is close to beginning talks with Iran over helping Iraq in the fight against the insurgency.
Rogers says the United States should be exhausting other options before turning to Iran for help.
"That would put us at odds with Iran's position in Syria, and it certainly would put us at odds with a country that we believe has U.S. blood on its hands by supporting and financing operations in Iraq against U.S. soldiers in the past," the Michigan Republican explained.
"We should not fall that far behind that we have to start talking with Iran first, there are lots of other, better options up front."
"The other problem with partnering with Iran is that we risk alienating "our Arab League partners," Rogers said.
"The Arab League partners don't trust Iran, you'll start fraying very fragile relationships in a way that will be dangerous in the years to come," he added.
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Plus, Rogers argues that the U.S. is able to help the Iraqis on its own.
"We have the capability to help Iraqis through air strikes, intelligence packages, help them with a little bit of command and control, not troops on the ground, to push back and change the momentum of this rising al-Qaida army," he said.
He said what's needed from Obama is "decisive action."
"There's a few interim steps that we can take, but first thing you have to do is push back the al-Qaida rising army coming toward Baghdad — we can do that," Rogers explained.
He said that this may take "some limited amount of troops on the ground" of about "100 well trained Marines who show up, whose sole job and purpose is to protect those people at the embassy," who are "designed to go into troubled areas," which he says he doesn't look at "as boots on the ground" but more of a "security footprint."
Rogers said on
"Fox News Sunday" that pushing back the jihadists in Iraq is crucial to avoid the fight's coming to Europe and the United States.
Former presidential candidate
Pat Buchanan told Newsmax on Monday that the United States should not take any action in Iraq yet, but "wait until the dust settles."
Buchanan also said he would not be opposed to working with Iran in this situation, likening it to when the U.S. worked with the Russian communist leader Joseph Stalin to push back the Nazis during World War II.
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