Quote
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration is grappling with how to bridge the gap between its increasingly dire assessment of the threat posed by the Islamic State group and the limited, defensive air campaign it has so far undertaken, which military officials acknowledge will not blunt the group's momentum.
For months, administration officials have been divided about the threat posed by the Islamic State as it seized parts of Syria and advanced on towns in Iraq. Now, amid new intelligence about its growing strength, a consensus is forming that the group presents an unacceptable terrorism risk to the United States and its allies.
At issue is whether President Barack Obama, elected on a platform of ending the Iraq war, will heed calls for a campaign to contain or destroy the Islamic State, an undertaking that could dominate U.S. foreign policy for the remainder of his term.
Proponents of doing so argue that the Islamic State must be stopped because it will destabilize America's allies in the region and eventually export terror to Europe and the U.S. Critics of the idea are urging the president just as strongly not to get sucked into another Middle East war, arguing that years of American micromanagement in that region have ended in tears.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a security forum in Aspen, Colorado, last month that the military is "preparing a strategy that has a series of options to present to our elected leaders on how we can initially contain, eventually disrupt, and finally defeat (the Islamic State group) over time."
Administration officials say the White House has been deeply divided at least since the start of 2014 over how much the Islamic State threatens Americans.
In January, when the militants overran the western Iraqi city of Fallujah, U.S. officials weighed whether to intervene. Since then, the number of Islamic State militants swelled from a few thousand to an estimated 15,000 die-hard members, according to two senior intelligence officials.
Many of the extremists are battle-hardened former members of Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard. The Islamic State, which has been disavowed by al-Qaida in a dispute over strategy, wants to strike a terrorist blow at the U.S. to assert its primacy in the jihadist movement, said Derek Harvey, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who advises U.S. Central Command. "They have been planning do to this for some time," he said. "We just don't know when."
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-weighs-strategy-against-islamic-state-070946778--politics.htmlFor months, administration officials have been divided about the threat posed by the Islamic State as it seized parts of Syria and advanced on towns in Iraq. Now, amid new intelligence about its growing strength, a consensus is forming that the group presents an unacceptable terrorism risk to the United States and its allies.
At issue is whether President Barack Obama, elected on a platform of ending the Iraq war, will heed calls for a campaign to contain or destroy the Islamic State, an undertaking that could dominate U.S. foreign policy for the remainder of his term.
Proponents of doing so argue that the Islamic State must be stopped because it will destabilize America's allies in the region and eventually export terror to Europe and the U.S. Critics of the idea are urging the president just as strongly not to get sucked into another Middle East war, arguing that years of American micromanagement in that region have ended in tears.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a security forum in Aspen, Colorado, last month that the military is "preparing a strategy that has a series of options to present to our elected leaders on how we can initially contain, eventually disrupt, and finally defeat (the Islamic State group) over time."
Administration officials say the White House has been deeply divided at least since the start of 2014 over how much the Islamic State threatens Americans.
In January, when the militants overran the western Iraqi city of Fallujah, U.S. officials weighed whether to intervene. Since then, the number of Islamic State militants swelled from a few thousand to an estimated 15,000 die-hard members, according to two senior intelligence officials.
Many of the extremists are battle-hardened former members of Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard. The Islamic State, which has been disavowed by al-Qaida in a dispute over strategy, wants to strike a terrorist blow at the U.S. to assert its primacy in the jihadist movement, said Derek Harvey, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who advises U.S. Central Command. "They have been planning do to this for some time," he said. "We just don't know when."
American politicians and intelligence experts have publically said that Isis or "Islamic state" as they are also known as....is the most violent and dangerous organization they have ever seen. They behead men, women and children that fall into their hands, kill prisoners in mass shootings and bury people alive. They have threaten thousands of people that if they don't convert to their extreme form of Islam they will be killed. They are a threat to the region for sure but are they a threat to America?
They have claimed that they will attack the American homeland and are already plotting jihad against us. The question is are they just blowing steam or can they pull off a serious attack such as al-Qaeda pulled off on 9/11?
Should we crush them in Syria and Iraq before they are strong enough to attack us? Should we just wait and continue to bomb them and see what develops? Should we try and put an international coalition together to go in there and wipe them out? Can they be wiped out? Do we really want to put boots on the ground there again? What do you think we should do and why?