CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: On Yemen and Fighting ISIS
Interview
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Brian, thank you.
Joining us, Senator James Risch. He's a Republican of Idaho. He's a member of the Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees.
Senator, thanks very much for joining us.
What's going on in Yemen looks totally like a disaster. The U.S., the Saudis, Germany, the Italians, they are all pulling out, shutting down their embassies right now. How concerned are you that Yemen potentially could be ruled, at least huge chunks of it, by AQAP, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is based in Yemen?
SEN. JAMES RISCH (R), IDAHO: Wolf, I guess the conclusion from your story is chaos reigns.
That has never been a terribly secure place. There's always been difficulties there. The country has been divided with Houthis in charge of one area and the al Qaeda in charge of another area. But now where we have pulled out and pulled out some of the key operations that we have there, it's going to be more difficult to operate within Yemen. We have been operating for some time, as you know, but the
president is going to have to step it up there. There's no question about it. I think to comment on the top of your story, there's a little bit of good news there, not the least of which is the Iraqis actually stood and fought. And they actually won.
More importantly, of course, is the report that others are hanging on there that are fighting. The Kurds are our best friends in the region. I have encouraged the administration at every level to engage the Kurds to help us. The Kurds are begging for our help. And we keep being told that, oh, they have to go through Baghdad in order to arm the Kurds.
I don't know who made up that rule. But somebody needs to set that rule aside and help these people out, because these are fierce fighters. They are great friends of ours. We ought to help them.
BLITZER: Yes, but they certainly don't have the equipment they need to fight these ISIS forces.
RISCH: No question about that.
BLITZER: And as Phil Black pointed out, these ISIS forces, they have taken over a lot of very sophisticated, advanced U.S. military hardware, which the Iraqi military basically abandoned as they ran away in the face of the ISIS offensive last year.
I want to talk about Iraq in a moment. But let's finish up with Yemen first.
Are you confident that Yemen will at some point be secure, or is it just going to be chaos there, potentially al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula not only growing, but dramatically becoming a greater threat? And these Houthi rebels, they're Shiites, they're dramatically backed by Iran, right? This is a lose-lose situation for the United States.
RISCH: Wolf, that was a great point you made about Iran. I was going to comment on that. Their fingerprints are all over this.
They are very much backed by Iran in every way possible, financially, militarily and everything else. They need to be reined up. You asked me my opinion in the short run. This is not a very pretty picture. I can't fathom that this thing is going to right itself. It's going to take intervention from the outside. Certainly other Arab nations need to get engaged.
And the other -- many of the Arab nations are very, very concerned about what's happening in Yemen.
BLITZER: Well, let's see if they step up and do something about it.
Stand by, Senator. We have more to discuss.
We have got to take a quick break. More with Senator James Risch right after this.
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BLITZER: We're back with Senator James Risch. And we're following breaking news, U.S. helicopter gunships now engaging ISIS forces in Iraq.
As you know, Senator, ISIS got dangerously close to several hundred U.S. Marines at that Al Asad Air Base in Iraq. How endangered potentially are these U.S. troops?
RISCH: You know, Wolf, just from the reports that we have had, I would say the ISIS troops are probably in more danger than our U.S. Marines.
For one thing, the Iraqis themselves defeated them and reportedly killed all the attackers. So I think that the Marines can take care of themselves. They really can.
Having said all this, you know, we're going to be facing when we get back to Washington, D.C., a vote on the request for authorization for military force. All this is making the votes probably tilt one direction a lot more.
And this thing is moving very quickly. And Congress is going to have to move very quickly behind it. And the president needs to stiffen up a bit in this area also. I'm hoping he will once the resolution passes.
BLITZER: Well, what do you want to change in that resolution? I assume you want some major changes.
RISCH: You know, Wolf, there's a debate going on right now. As you know, there's a spectrum of view in the Congress.
On the one side, there's ones that don't want to engage at all. On other side, they want a full-blown foot soldier invasion. Neither one of those are going to win. But it needs to have more attention than it's getting. And I think the big criticism right now is, people don't feel that the president has the willpower that he should have to impress our will on what's going on there right now.
And we have the capability of doing it. We're going to need to do it. I agree with the people who say that we should not have a full-scale engagement. I think it's going to take some people on the ground. I think the president's idea of using the special forces is a really good idea.
Certainly, our airpower and the drone power is going to be very devastating to them if they would step it up. And they're going to need to step it up.
BLITZER: Should the American public, Senator, be ready for a 20- or 30-year involvement in that part of the world right now, given this level of insurgency and what is going on?
RISCH: You know, Wolf, you would certainly hope not.
But if you step back and look at it and look at it from 30,000 feet, this thing is -- what you do is, you go in, you get the hot spot, you suppress it, and then you try to walk away. And what happens? It blows up again.
I will say this. In the last half-dozen years or so, the situation has become very different as far as engaging the enemy is concerned. What we have done using our airpower, using drone power, has been very, very debilitating to the enemy.
Now, you remember we started off with in Iraq hundreds of thousands of troops. Then, in other -- in the other conflicts, we have had thousands of troops. And that's been ratcheting down. In addition to that, the Arab countries are now -- as I have reported to you before, are very, very concerned about what's going on with the radicals. They weren't before. They are now.
And I think things are going to change dramatically. And it is going to take the Arab nations themselves. As they have said, this is our war now. And they need to accept that.
BLITZER: You told me the other day, Senator, that ISIS, the terrorists were moving beyond their -- what you called their aspirational goals of trying to hit the U.S. homeland, that they may be in a more advanced stage. I wonder if you want to elaborate a little bit.
RISCH: Yes, I would like to elaborate, but I really can't, Wolf. Most of that material is classified.
But I can assure you, we deal with this every day. And we believe that they are moving beyond their aspirations. Look, this is a group that, as you have seen, has been very, very successful in a really short period of time. They are emboldened. They are moving, as we saw today, against a base that contains U.S. forces.
These people are very bold. Their preferred target is the U.S. homeland.
BLITZER: Are there ISIS terrorist sleeper cells, plots in the United States right now?
RISCH: You know, as far as I'm going to go with that with you, Wolf, is to tell you that there are people who have traveled to Syria, fought with ISIS and have returned to the United States.
I think people can draw their own conclusions from that as far as what that means for us here in the homeland. It is a dangerous situation.
BLITZER: All right. It certainly sounds that way.
All right, Senator, thanks very much for joining us, Senator Jim Risch of Idaho.
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