U. S. Defense officials after nine months of training and equipping Syrian Rebels to fight eyes as they have only four or five rebels on the battlefield with a few dozen more on the way. Here the chair the of the Senate Armed Services committee is john mccain, the Ranking Member zachary. The Senate Armed Services Committee Meets to receive testimony on the United States strategy of military operations counter Islamic State of iraq or isil. I want to thank the witnesses under secretary wormuth and general austin for appearing before us today and their continued service to our nation. Its been one year since president obama spoke to the nation about the threat posed by isil and increased to u. S. Military operations against us. Many of us believe the goal of the present laid out quote to degrade and ultimately destroy isil is right. Many of us agree the military strategy that seeks to empower local horses and i dashed to combat isil. With training equipment assistance in their power one
You have to say it started in december thats when it authorized they are not or able to organize well. Theres divisions within iraq that make it very difficult. I just wish it werent so. Im afraid that is the reality we are dealing with. I believe the un has 4 million refugee, 7 million displaced person. It is obvious to me this is a humanitarian catastrophe. We need to to deal with it in an honest way. The most effective and honest way is to keep people as close to home as possible. If they they cant stay in their home because of violence and war than they ought to be as close to home as possible. I talked to a senior official recently and he told me on this refugee crisis is the greatest threat to europe since world war ii. I dont see any plan to make it better. We have have to consider creating safe zones within syria. I understand there some places within syria that refugees can stay. We cant have millions of people walking into europe. Its hardly worth discussing. I am really worr
Learn more. Thank you sir. Thank you mr. Miller. I like to echo mr. Millers, that everyone is concerned about tha investigation and how it ended. Those who had no involvement in us the and a mistake. T ha general you and i headache conversation about the report,1, we first got the 9 11 commissiot report delivered to congress it had chapter 12 that detailed what we needed to do in future e e shouldnt do. It specifically set our fight was not against al qaeda and a summa been bottomed solely, if if we viewed our fight is that wextre would lose. It was islamic extremism andter worldwide terrorism. When we look at iraq, it is clear that we have not heraldede chapter 12. We have seen isis take hold, ano now threaten our homeland. You have made recommendations that we continue to hold troops inaf. Afghanistan, you both isil there. Can you tell if you did withtr john troops down to a level of ef00 the effect on the safety of our troops and the ability ofcon our effectiveness for counterterror
And know that they were working with who they identified as their afghan brothers so just im regret that so much hey, bad i can remember the first time i went to afghanistan with sheila jacksonlee. She pointed out that bad news has no feet and excuse me. What is it . Good news has no feet and bad news has wings. And wow. But the bad the good thing is that extraordinary progress has been made and i agree with the chairman, too, that success in afghanistan is to deny terrorists safe havens which protects American Families and that we cannot forget it was september 11th, 2001, the attacks on our country, that were originated, planned and culminated from caves in afghanistan so im just very appreciative of your efforts and the largely bipartisan support we have here w. That in mind, with this special operations reliance of support from conventional forces, if conventional forces are reduced, as has been called for, how can special operations fill in this gap . Sir, today, we continue to ta
Captioning performed by vitac this goes back to the bay of pigs, veit am inietnavietnam, t. This allegation is these allegations are extremely serious, and i hope you will i understand we have an ig investigation, but as a Commanding Officer i would hope that you would just be you will over this. And i want to ask you a direct question. Have you ever ordered, suggested, or hinted to any of the Intelligence Command that they should sweeten the intelligence reports in order to portray a more positive view of the success of our efforts in iraq or syria . Absolu