|
 Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence
committee, said Secretary of State John Kerry gave the panel a more
comprehensive picture last week of the U.S. strategy to combat
Islamic State, including talks in Vienna to find a diplomatic
solution to the Syrian crisis.
However, she said on CBS, "I don't think the approach is sufficient
to the job."
Feinstein said President Barack Obama's decision to send 50 special
forces to Syria will not solve the problem and advocated a larger,
more specific special operations plan.
"We need to be aggressive now," she told "Face the Nation."
Feinstein described Islamic State, which has seized large portions
of Syria and Iraq and declared a caliphate, as an "enormously
strong" quasi-state with 30,000 fighters, a civil infrastructure and
funding.
 It is also spreading quickly to other countries, she said, noting
the Nov. 13 Paris attacks that killed 130 people were masterminded
by Islamic State devotees in Belgium."It's a big, big problem,"
Feinstein told CBS. "This has gone on too long now. And it has not
gotten better. It's gotten worse."
Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House of
Representatives' intelligence committee, criticized Obama's Islamic
State strategy as a "containment policy."
U.S. strategy should be broadened to match the group's global
threat, he said on CNN's "State of the Union."
Brett McGurk, Obama's envoy to the global coalition to counter
Islamic State, fended off the criticism. He said the coalition was
targeting the group's international networks as well as pressuring
it in Iraq and Syria.
"We're not going to be satisfied until we have destroyed this
organization," he said on "Face the Nation."
The deadly attacks in Paris and a threat alert in Brussels over the
weekend have heightened concerns of an attack on American soil. The
House of Representatives moved to tighten screening of refugees from
Syria last week, fearing that militants could slip in among them.
[to top of second column] |
In New York on Sunday, security officials sought to calm public
fears before this week's Thanksgiving Day holiday. Homeland Security
Secretary Jeh Johnson appeared with New York City officials for a
security drill in a subway station.
"We want the American public to know that we're on the job, we're
vigilant and we're continually reevaluating our security posture,"
Johnson said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
Nunes was asked about a New York Times report on whether
intelligence assessments from U.S. Central Command painted an overly
optimistic picture of the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria.
He said members of his committee, which is investigating the claims
along with the Pentagon's inspector general, had long noticed such
discrepancies between what they saw during visits to the region and
in the intelligence reports.
Obama, at a news conference in Malaysia closing a weeklong overseas
trip, said described the intelligence he has been getting as a
"clear-eyed, sober assessment."
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Ralph Boulton, Ros Russell
and Paul Simao)
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