Military ponders global ‘hubs’ to fight ISIS

He explained that the military has thought about these possibilities and the potential “for loss of American life in the air in an effort to defend the no-fly zone”, concluding that such a move is not warranted.

John McCain, who has long criticized the Obama administration’s strategy, rebutted.

“I think that we are building momentum against ISIL”, he said, citing “the trajectory of that success all around Iraq and Syria, some actions we’re taking in Libya”. His message: ISIS is doing more, so the world must do more.

“And we greatly increased our insight into that infrastructure in recent months, and this is one of the ways that, as our intelligence – which I have to say when I started out had a lot of improvement to be done in there in terms of collection and graininess of data and so forth – is getting a lot better”.

The entirety of the USA shift in its war against the Islamic State group means more Americans will be on the ground, waging combat and in harm’s way.

“And, by the way, [we’re employing] other skills, intelligence skills and other skills that allow us to leverage local forces and make it much more powerful by bringing in the full weight of America’s might behind it”, he said. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, top Democrat on the committee, told Carter. “In fact, they have actually tried to block this funding from going through”.

Carter, who acknowledged that Islamic State hasn’t been contained, said the USA continues to accelerate its military effort.

He was “quite concerned” with Europe’s general contribution to the fights and that Sunni Arab force had been reluctant to take part because of the involvement of Iran and Russian Federation.

The Pentagon is standing by to extend other forms of assistance to the Iraqi army, once Baghdad “resolves its political divisions”, Carter said. He said such a force would be “primarily made up of Sunni Arab and European forces, but with a strong USA component”. “While we certainly have the capability”, he said, “it would be a significant undertaking” and could “Americanize the conflict”.

Opponents, including McCain, believe the USA must focus on a decisive military defeat of the extremist network before it can fix regional societies to ensure another group cannot rise in its wake, as the Islamic State group did after the effective destruction of al-Qaida in Iraq.

McCain then addressed Selva directly, saying, “General, I must say, that’s one of the more embarrassing statements I’ve ever heard from a uniformed military officer, that we are anxious about Syria and Russia’s reaction to saving the lives of thousands and thousands of Syrians who are being barrel bombed and massacred-so far, 240,000 of them”.

The secretary said he had “less high hopes, perhaps, than you that they would assemble such a force”.

“Remarkable performance”, McCain said sarcastically.

“There’s no place on the planet we should give them safe haven”, Graham said.

McCain left the hearing room without shaking hands with the witnesses.