Rubio: Obama has committed ‘malpractice’

Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Sunday blasted President Obama’s foreign policy decisions, saying Obama has committed “presidential malpractice.”

The Florida senator said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that he wants Obama to describe to the American people on Wednesday the risk that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) poses and explain what our national security interests are in the region.

“I wanna hear what he should have said — months ago, weeks ago,” Rubio said.

Rubio said the only way ISIS will be able to establish an Islamic power state in the Middle East is to drive the U.S. from the region.

“And the way they’re gonna drive us from the region is through terrorist acts, including here in the homeland,” he said.

The Florida senator said he hopes that the U.S. response will include a “sustained air campaign involving every element of our air power” targeting the supply lines, and ISIS command and control structures, including targets in Syria.

“You cannot defeat ISIL, unless you hit them in those parts of Syria that they now control, where the Syrian government is not even present,” he added, using an alternate name for the group.

Rubio said he believes ISIS militants pose a threat to the American homeland because of the “hundreds if not thousands of” ISIS militants who hold Western passports and the knowledge of U.S. intelligence-gathering capabilities that the group has obtained through disclosures.

“So for us to simply sit back and say, ‘We don’t think they pose a threat,’ because we haven’t seen one, I think would be short-sighted,” he said.