Special to WorldTribune.com

Rowan Scarborough, Washington Times

A think tank with ties to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton issued strong criticisms Thursday of the Obama administration’s strategy to combat the Islamic State [of Iraq and Levant], with analysts writing that the U.S. is “failing” and needs to change course. …

Mrs. Clinton helped launched the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) with a keynote speech in 2007. The center is directed by Michele Flournoy, the former undersecretary of defense for policy for President Obama, and who is viewed as a candidate for defense secretary in a Clinton administration.

CNAS issued seven papers Thursday on defeating the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and ISIL, with proposals far different from the current Obama strategy of relying on limited airstrikes and training Iraq’s unproven army to do the ground combat against a growing and vicious terrorist force.

The analyses could be viewed as a preview of how a potential President Clinton would change course in confronting the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria and globally. CNAS analyst Philip Carter, who deployed to Iraq as an Army officer advising the police, and who later became Obama’s chief of detainee policy, calls for a significant deployment of American ground forces, an option Obama has avoided.

“To defeat ISIS in Iraq, the United States must deploy special operations forces (SOF) to directly advise and assist Iraqi forces in combat and embed those SOF advisors at the tactical echelons where they can make a difference,” Carter writes.

Read Complete Article.

  LIFE, Triangulation time: Hillary’s think tank hits Obama’s ‘failing’ ISIL strategy, WorldTribune.com