Obama inevitably will need to use U.S. ground troops to defeat Islamic State, experts warn - Washington Times

Obama inevitably will need to use U.S. ground troops to defeat Islamic State, experts warn - Washington Times: Trying to uproot and destroy the Islamic State’s army of terrorists in Iraq without American ground troops, as President Obama promoted Wednesday night, is doomed to failure, national security experts say.

At the least, the president needs to get ground troops closer to the fight, say some politicians and analysts. He should introduce special operations units to advise and join the Iraqis on hunt-and-kill missions against Islamic State leaders, as well as insert controllers to point out targets for warplanes.



“What a waste of time,” said Larry Johnson,
a former CIA analyst and counterterrorism official at the State
Department. “We have not learned a thing in 80 years. [The Islamic
State] is an army. The air power is not going to get the job done. Until
you put troops in and kill these guys, they’re going to continue. They
adjust to tactics. They meld into [the] civilian population.”




 See original work for more on this and other stories.