The debate over the definition of boots on the ground has wasted a lot of time in the battle against the Islamic State (ISIS), and the U.S. is "in trouble" as a result, Rep. Mike Rogers told MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
Rogers, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said that delay in defining boots on the ground caused the U.S. to go into a "war of semantics before we went into a war with ISIS."
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"We're trying to argue, well, what is a boot on the ground? Is a special forces soldier boot on the ground? Is it not a boot on the ground? We spent a lot of time wasting.
"We need to move quicker. We said last month, 'If we're arguing about this a month from now, what the battle footprint looks like, we're going to be in trouble.' I would argue, we're in trouble," the Michigan Republican said Wednesday.
While the Islamic State's "ability to produce and maintain weapons caches and other things has been diminished a little bit," Rogers said its ideology was expanding, with "logistical and moral support" streaming in from as many as 12 al-Qaida affiliates.
Rogers said the support from other terrorist organizations meant the Islamic State had the "opportunity for logistics sharing and other things that becomes important in sustaining their campaign."
The U.S. needed to mount a "sustained, high-tempo effort against ISIS in Syria and Iraq," which meant allowing troops to go "downrange" into Syria, Rogers explained, adding Peshmurga forces and the Syrian rebels would "fight better, fight more effective" alongside American forces.
"You'll have bigger bang for your buck, if you will, by allowing those, our U.S. troops, no one does this better, to keep them into the fight and target them at the right places. That allows us to get better intelligence. It allows us to put better packages together," he said.
Rogers also said the U.S. should "take out [the Islamic State's] ability to produce, refine gasoline," because it was a "problem" the Islamic militants could "refine enough gasoline to keep their own vehicles moving."
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