House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) slammed the Biden administration on Sunday over its response to attacks on U.S. forces in the Middle East.
Turner made the remarks during a CBS News interview while speaking about the strikes that administration launched late last week in response to three U.S. troops being killed in an attack on a U.S. base in Jordan.
Turner pushed back on the administration’s claims that they will respond any time an attack is made on U.S. forces, saying that it was “not true.”
“They’ve tolerated over 160 of these attacks,” he said, later adding: “They keep saying that they want to retaliate, but then they say it’s about deterrence, then they say it’s about diminishing capabilities. Those are all different goals and objectives. And they’re not doing any of those. We all know that this is just about Iran. These are all franchises of Iran. And the administration has no policy with respect to Iran, how to diminish their capability, diminish these attacks and diminish their nefarious activities in the Middle East.”
Turner said that the administration’s “incredibly poor” responses to the attacks has sent the message to Iran that the U.S. will tolerate the attacks and thus will tolerate having casualties.
“And the problem here is that the administration, back to goals and objectives, has no goal and objective,” he said. “Iran pays no price when militias are attacked; the militias don’t care. And when you diminish their capability for the moment that you’ve struck them, you haven’t diminished their overall capability, these attacks are still going to happen. The administration needs two things: a real plan with respect to Iran and countering Iran in the area. But secondly, diminishing capacity to stop these attacks. We can’t play defense forever. Our systems to protect our troops and our ships cannot continue to respond to these attacks with 100% success. Tolerating the attacks, tolerates casualties. We need to diminish their capability and we need to take this problem to Iran.”
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