I wanted to note. Number one, theres some photos of you with cigars, with cigar smoke. Long time cigar smoker . Theres the cigar picture right there. I like what i call ponies, peter. Small cigars. At one time i was smoking probably five or six cigars well, strike that. Three or four cigars a day. Now that changed to three or four cigars a week. Then finally i just said to heck with it. Part of the reason was the staff didnt like it. Some of my colleagues didnt like it. The chief of staff, i think, led the fight on that. What the heck . If it is annoying to them, i dont have to have a cigar in my mouth every day. Ive been free of cigar smoke probably in excess of five years. Congressman coble, youve worked on a couple of issues that may not strike your colleagues as positive, such as limiting congressional retirement, term limits, cola increases, being careful about cola increases. Have you gotten so pushback from your colleagues up here on capitol hill . When i came up here, i said i
You can also let us know what you think on social media. Our twitter handle is cspanwj. We are on facebook at facebook. Com cspan. Or, you can send us an email at journal cspan. Org. Now, white house spokesman josh earnest was at a News Conference on friday to explain the president s decision. Here is what he said. [video clip] our efforts have improve their performance on the battlefield. It has yielded progress. The president wants to identify that assistance that we are providing. One way to intensify that assistance is pair them up with experts, some of the smartest, bravest, most effective fighters in the United States military. That is exactly what were doing. I do expect that will improve their performance on the battlefield. They will not be in a combat mission. [indiscernible] they could find themselves in a combat situation. There is no denying the amount of risk they are taking on here. They will be equipped to defend themselves. Host we are talking about the u. S. s decisio
More recently to retake tikrit as well as other successful engagements. On the political front, prime Prime Minister abadi continues to demonstrate the resolve necessary to confront isil and hes striving to manage what is a very difficult Political Landscape in baghdad. In syria, weve seen some opportunities emerge that we didnt envision a year ago, particularly in the northern part of the country where syrian kurds working with syrian arabs has successfully pressured isil along the turkish border. Over a year ago, the president outlined a whole strategy to degrade and ultimately defeat isil and he emphasized it would be a multiyear campaign. When secretary carter was here outlined a whole strategy to in july he outlined the nine lines of effort that comprise our strategy so i wont go over them in detail but i will emphasize that it will take more than the military campaign to be successful. We also need to dry up isils finances. We need to stop the flow of foreign fighters into iraq a
There is no military solution to this problem. That is misleading. The real problem is will achieve nothing. Changing those conditions is what the administration is consistently failed to do. Instead it is assumed our nation could withdraw from the middle east and avoid the conflict. On those occasions where the administration has felt compelled to respond after the use of chemical weapons or with the rise of isil, and now amid the ii, the administration has address the symptoms of the problem rather than the problem itself and made that problem worse. There no clearer example than this than the syrian train and equip program. The fighters can only fight isil, not assaults forces which have slaughtered more syrians then isil has. The Administration Made no commitment until only recently to provide these forces with any meaningful military support was they returned to syria. After millions of dollars and months of effort the Program Failed to come to the department original expectations
Mr. Mccain none of the moderate of forces have come under attack from russia . Secretary carter not in our title x program. Mr. Mccain that is fascinating. Secretary carter let me be clear, chairman, the russians attackde assad do moderate forces. One of the reasons why the russian approach is so mr. Mccain are we going to train these young people . Of a going to send them into syria to fight . Are going to protect them . Anyone we send in an train, we are going to protect from russian air attacks. Secretary carter we have an obligation to do that and we have made that clear right from the beginning. Mr. Mccain we havent done it. We havent done it. I promise you the have. You will have to correct the record. And formerronius secretary kade, and now we understand secretary clinton, have all stated that they think we should stop the barrel bombing and that we should train and equip. Zones should have nofly or aircraft exclusionary zones. As complicated as it is, we were able to do northe