How the U.S. Allowed ISIS to Form a Terrorist Army

The United States has sent additional military advisers to Iraq and increased the number of drone flights to 50 per day, up from one flight a month. Yet so far this has done little to stop the rise of the jihadist terror group, the Islamic State, abbreviated as ISIS or ISIL, which has transformed itself from a loosely aligned band of militants to a full-blown army of terrorists, Brett McGurk, the deputy assistant defense secretary for Iraq and Iran, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday.

“ISIL is worse than al Qaeda,” said McGurk. “ISIL is no longer simply a terrorist organization. It is now a full-blown army seeking to establish a self-governing state through the Tigris and Euphrates valley in what is now Syria and Iraq.”

Related: ISIS – From Terror Group to ‘Full-Blown Army’

McGurk’s testimony shows just how quickly ISIS has grown and established itself as a legitimate military force. Back in February, McGurk warned that the threat from al Qaeda was increasing in Iraq. In the last six months, ISIS has broken with al Qaeda and introduced elements of sharia law across western Iraq and eastern Syria. It is now on the verge of taking Baghdad.

“We did see this coming,” said Chairman Ed Royce (R-CA). “And that makes it even more troubling that the administration didn’t do what was necessary to prevent [ISIL] from taking over such a large swath of Iraq.”

Royce and other Republicans on the committee slammed the Obama administration for failing to conduct drone strikes against ISIS. McGurk, however, said that it was not clear if a drone strategy would effectively stop the group.

“The first principle, and the president’s policy is that we want to enable local actors to be able to secure their own space as best we can. That was also the desire of the Iraqi government,” McGurk said. “The information we have now on these networks is night and day from where it was in May, when the request from the Iraqis first came in. And there is a significant risk, Mr. Chairman, of taking any military action without that level of granularity.”


[link to finance.yahoo.com]