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Feinstein: Obama ‘too cautious’ on Islamic State militants

A top Democratic senator Sunday said President Obama is being “too cautious” with the Islamic State militants that beheaded journalist James Foley and said the commander-in-chief needs a strategy before the jihadists take over Baghdad.

“I’ve learned one thing about this president and that is he’s very cautious, maybe in this instance too cautious,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Obama, who once referred to ISIS as the JV team, admitted this week the US doesn’t have a military strategy yet to deal with them.

The terrorist group that has declared a caliphate, brutally beheaded Foley as a warning to the US to stop its airstrikes in Iraq.

Feinstein (D-CA) said she’s never seen a group that “compares with its viciousness” and has the financial and military ability to move so quickly from Syria.

“They crossed the border into Iraq before we even knew it happened,” Feinstein said. “This is a group of people who are extraordinarily dangerous and they’ll kill with abandon.”

Sen. Diane FeinsteinAP

ISIS has moved from Syria and taken up swaths of Iraq in effort to form one Islamic State. US airstrikes coupled with Iraqi and Kurdish forces on the ground helped reclaim the Mosul Dam that the terrorists had captured, but Feinstein warned the group will keep on fighting deeper into Iraq.

“I believe their goal is Baghdad,” she said. “I think it’s very, very serious. And we have to have a strategy to deal with it.”

The Obama administration is weighing airstrikes in Syria, where ISIS is headquartered. The US has already conducted more than 100 limited airstrikes in Iraq.

Rep. Adam Smith ( D-WA) urged caution before military action so the US can build better coalitions in the region.

“We can’t simply bomb first and ask questions later. We have to have the right targets and the right support in order to be effective in stopping ISIS,” Smith said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“We can’t wait forever,” retorted Rep. Peter King (R-NY). “The longer we do wait the stronger ISIS becomes and more people are massacred.”

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