The United States must move carefully on how to combat the Islamist State (ISIS) so as not to repeat the same mistakes from the last time the country went to war in Iraq, Sen. Claire McCaskill told MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
"I think we have to act carefully, and I think we have to have intelligence," the Missouri Democrat said Friday. "I think people still remember that we rushed into Iraq, and it hasn't obviously turned out that well long term, because the underlying political problems are so difficult."
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McCaskill explained that the recent airstrikes the U.S. launched in Iraq were proof that a careful approach worked, adding that officials were conducting the same type of analysis to determine the best options to proceed.
"I think the same kind of analysis is now going on in other places. What can we do, surgically and strategically, that will support wiping out this horrible, extreme terrorist organization, but at the same time not get us into a sticky wicket that we don't really have any way of getting out of?" she said.
President Barack Obama was "spending a lot of time getting Europe with it, in terms of tightening the screws" to build a coalition to combat ISIS, McCaskill said, adding the president was in close contact with his military advisers.
"If you really know what's going on inside the White House, he is very close to his military advisers, very close to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and all of the leaders of each branch of the military, and to (Secretary of Defense Chuck) Hagel. And, they are in constant communication and the intelligence community," she said.
From a military standpoint, she said it sounded great "in the abstract" to attack ISIS, but questioned whether anyone knew what would be required to eradicate the terrorist organization.
"Wiping it out, I don't know that we even know what that would look like, in terms of what we'd have to deploy around the world, in terms of boots on the ground," she said.
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