McCain: U.S. strategy against ISIL falls short, lets dangers 'metastasize'

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-AZ) issued a statement on Tuesday regarding the announcement from Defense Secretary Ashton Carter about additional military personnel being sent to help with the battle against ISIL.

“Secretary Carter’s announcement of the deployment of additional U.S. special-operations forces to fight ISIL in Iraq and Syria is a belated step forward," McCain said. "Many of my colleagues and I have been calling for years to deploy these forces, as well as forward air controllers and additional military advisers, to increase the tempo of our military operations against ISIL and gather intelligence that can add lethality and precision to our air campaign.

"However, today’s announcement is yet another reactive and incremental step, specifically responding to the Paris attacks, in a policy that has allowed the ISIL threat to metastasize to Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere across the globe," McCain said. "A comprehensive strategy to defeat ISIL is totally absent, urgently needed and long overdue.”