President Barack Obama has ignited fresh conservative criticism by saying “we don’t have a strategy yet” for airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria.
Republicans immediately jumped on the President’s comment during a news conference Thursday by saying it proved their longstanding complaint that his foreign policy failed to seriously respond to the terrorist threat from Sunni jihadists in the Syrian civil war.
“I’m not sure the severity of the problem has really sunk in to the administration just yet,” said GOP Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, who chairs the House intelligence committee.
Referring to the ISIS lightning sweep across northern Iraq this summer, Rogers said “we knew it was a problem before June” and noted that “even the President said he was talking about this to Iraqi officials over a year ago.”