CNN "The Situation Room" Transcript: Conflict in the Middle East

Interview

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BLITZER: It certainly is, the president saying about 100 kilometers of the Turkey-Syria are very, very open, the Turkish military, 500,000 troops not doing enough. The president clearly frustrated with Turkey right now, a NATO ally.

Jim Acosta, thanks very much.

Let's talk about all of this, much more, with the ranking member of the House Armed Services, Democratic Congressman Adam Smith of Washington.

Congressman, thanks very much for coming in.

REP. ADAM SMITH (D), WASHINGTON: Thanks, Wolf.

BLITZER: You're the top Democrat there. You were at that hearing. Were you reassured? Because I know you have had some questions over these past several months.

SMITH: Yes, I think the focus is better.

And I think Secretary Carter and General Dunford presented a much better strategy. I think the communication strategy coming out of the White House, well, frankly, throughout the Syrian conflict, has not been great. There have been things said that have led people to not know exactly what the White House was doing. I think they are definitely getting clearer and focusing and pushing a strategy forward.

BLITZER: Because the communications, the dialogue, as you correctly point out, has been confusing.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dunford, today said the U.S. has not contained ISIS. Two weeks ago, the president in that interview with ABC News said ISIS is contained. Secretary Kerry says -- in a new interview with "Rolling Stone," he says the U.S. can defeat ISIS -- quote -- "if we get our act together."

I mean, there seems to be a conflicting amount of statements coming out, some positive, some negative.

SMITH: Well, there's two pieces to this.

First of all, saying that ISIS is contained I think is flat wrong. They have reach. They have an ability to spread their ideology and to spread terrorist acts, gosh, over the Internet, much less by sending people across borders. They just motivate people in Western countries.

BLITZER: Why would the president say that in that interview, that ISIS was being contained? Was he being very specific to in Iraq and Syria and certain geographic areas? Because the impression was that the U.S. is winning this war.

(CROSSTALK)

SMITH: Right. What the president is trying to do is to counter some of the more extremist rhetoric that is frankly coming from the Republican Party about how, you know, we're -- basically, we're all going to die, trying to panic everybody, that ISIS is coming, ISIS is here, ISIS is there.

He's trying to put it in perspective. And I agree with him on that. I think playing into the fear that ISIS is trying to spread doesn't help. That simply moves terrorism forward.

That said, I think you have to be careful about the way you put it. I think Secretary Carter is right. ISIS has lost territory in Syria and Iraq. And there was just a news story a couple days ago about how defections are starting to happen because the perception is that ISIS is no longer making progress.

That said, as we have seen, they can spread terror over the Internet, they can spread terror with a phone call. So to say that they are contained, until they are gone, they are not contained.

BLITZER: And Secretary Carter under repeated questioning even refused to say the U.S. is winning right now. He said the U.S. eventually will win, but he can't say that the U.S. is winning.

SMITH: That's the wrong question, because you don't really have a metric.

What he said was, we are making progress in terms of rolling back ISIS' gains. The Kurds on the ground, primarily in Syria and Iraq, have taken back territory, and that has undermined them. But when you have a terrorist organization, as the cliche goes, we need to be right every time. They only need to be right once.

You can't say you are winning until the group is completely gone. BLITZER: To the critics who say this seems half-hearted, send 50

special operations forces to Syria, maybe now another 200, if you're going to go in there and destroy and defeat ISIS, don't you need to send a lot more than let's say 250 U.S. commandos?

SMITH: And there is where I think the critics are among, because what the president is absolutely right about is if this becomes the U.S. military vs. ISIS, then ISIS has won a huge, huge victory.

They can then portray themselves as defending Islam against Western aggression. The only way we win this war is if Sunnis in Iraq and Syria and everywhere else ISIS is defeat ISIS. If it's Western aggression, as we saw in Iraq, we went in, we wiped out, but with a Western force there, they popped right back up.

If they can credibly claim that Western aggression against Muslims is what they are fighting against, then we're never going to -- we will eliminate this group and another one will pop up. It has to be led by the locals, by the Sunnis and the Arab states. And we have to support that.

If we send 30,000 troops in there, we may win in a month, but the terrorism will continue. This has to be locally driven.

BLITZER: The former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, retired General Michael Flynn, he spoke to our own Jake Tapper today and he made a stunning charge that, back in 2012, when the DIA was offering assessments of how ISIS was growing, this is not the line the White House wanted to hear, the president was in the midst of a reelection campaign, and they simply ignored those warnings.

Listen to what he said. Listen to this.

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BLITZER: It's a pretty stunning accusation, especially given the current controversy, that the U.S. military's Central Command was forced to tailor its intelligence to be more attuned to what the White House wanted.

SMITH: Yes, I think Mike Flynn is absolutely wrong.

And the evidence is in what the Obama administration was doing in 2012. They were still actively, you know, doing drone strikes. The intelligence was aggressive against al Qaeda and against ISIS. We were still targeting in, gosh, a dozen different countries. So he's absolutely wrong.

BLITZER: Because he points out that the president was calling ISIS the J.V. team.

SMITH: Yes. Well, that, again, the president has said some things that are not accurate.

But while he was calling them the J.V. team, we were actively, through our intelligence and our defense agencies, targeting them, aggressively going after them and also al Qaeda and a variety of different other groups that threaten us.

The notion that the White House decided in 2012 that this was over and stopped is just totally belied by the facts, the facts that the drone strikes continued, the intelligence continued, the targeting of ISIS and al Qaeda and other groups continued.

BLITZER: And what about this current investigation by the Pentagon's inspector general that the Central Command was forced into sort of cherry-picking or doctoring its intelligence to make it more palatable to what the White House wanted?

You're familiar with this?

(CROSSTALK)

SMITH: I'm familiar with it. We don't have any evidence that that has happened.

I will tell you, I have been to Afghanistan and Iraq and at least seven times each, and I talked to one group of analysts, and they gave one picture. I talked to another group of analysts. I went from the CIA to the DIA. There is always differences of opinion.

OK? And, frankly, the CIA is always the most pessimistic of the group. The DIA tends to be more optimistic. And this was when President Bush was in charge, as well as when President Obama was in charge. There is no evidence whatsoever that the White House pretended this threat didn't exist.

BLITZER: And just to be precise, when the president labeled ISIS the J.V. team, you're saying what?

SMITH: I don't think that was the correct thing to say.

BLITZER: That he was simply wrong?

SMITH: Yes, I think he is wrong.

But I also think that what he's trying to do is, look, terror is about spreading fear and making people change their way of lives. We have had presidential candidates on the other side talk about how we need to like round up all of the Muslims, that we need to label -- the fear that is being spread by the other side, the president is trying to say, hey, calm down. We are the United States of America. We have got this under control.

And I think he's right to say that. I do think some of his choices of words have underestimated the enemy in a way that is not helpful.

BLITZER: We're going to have a lot more to talk about, Congressman. Stay with us.

SMITH: Sure.

BLITZER: There's a new report that ISIS is recruiting assets here in the United States on Twitter. Much more coming up right after a quick break.

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BLITZER: The breaking news this hour, the U.S. increasing boots on the ground to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The defense secretary, Ash Carter, announcing the Pentagon will deploy what is being called a specialized expeditionary targeting force to Iraq to conduct raids, rescue hostages, gather intelligence, capture ISIS leaders whether in Iraq or Syria.

We're back with the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, Democratic Congressman Adam Smith of Washington state.

The president was pretty blunt today in his news conference in Paris criticizing Turkey, a NATO ally which has one of the largest militaries in the world, 400,000 active duty troops, 200,000 reservists, the president saying that there's nearly 100 kilometers on their border with Syria where they are not patrolling.

There's a transit point for foreign fighters. He says ISIS is shipping out oil from Syria into Turkey for sale to fund their terror operations. What's going on over here? Turkey is a NATO ally. Can't they close up that 100-kilometer area of the border?

SMITH: That's a huge part of the problem.

We have two clear missions in Syria. We have to get rid of Assad. Assad is not a legitimate leader. And, second, we have to get rid of ISIS. We have to do both, because part of what fuels ISIS is Assad.

BLITZER: But why isn't Turkey stepping up?

SMITH: I'm getting there, because Turkey's number one goal when this whole thing started was to get rid of Assad.

And, quite frankly, Turkey and a number of other Arab states were not nearly as particular as they should have been about who they were funding in that effort. And a lot of the guns, ammunitions, funds wound up going to groups al-Nusra and ISIS, because, frankly, the Arab states didn't care. They just wanted Assad gone.

Now that they see the threat, they are sort of caught in the middle. You have got Turkey that is focused on eliminating Assad, whereas a lot of other folks are focused on eliminating ISIS. So, they're focused on eliminating Assad, so I don't know what is going on back and forth across the Turkish border.

Certainly, there's fighters going back and forth across. But they need to close and it they need to recognize that defeating Assad, you have to do both. You have to defeat Assad and defeat ISIS. And if you have a strategy that is only helping one, then it's not enough.

BLITZER: ISIS supposedly is recruiting a lot of assets here in the United States. A new study out today by George Washington University says that it's almost unprecedented. About 300 ISIS Twitter experts are recruiting people to go ahead and join this movement.

Is enough being done to stop this movement from growing here in the United States?

SMITH: We're working on it, but it's a difficult threat.

BLITZER: Why are they so good in social media and the U.S., which basically created and developed social media, not so good at it?

SMITH: They have a simpler message, Wolf.

And they are simply preaching to the disaffected. It's always easier to preach to people who have nothing to lose and who are disaffected by what is going on. But I met with the NSA director. Chairman Thornberry and I did today.

And part of the problem is ISIS is -- they're smarter about this stuff. Once they find someone who they think they can work with, they encrypt everything and it's harder to get access to that information. But, look, social media appeals to the lowest common denominator.

You can access whoever you want to access. And that's the real threat. And all of this concern about the Syrian refugees, the Syrian refugees go through about a two-year process. Any refugee does and are vetted very, very carefully. What I'm concerned about is exactly what you describe. They can recruit people who we don't even know.

BLITZER: Who are in the United States.

(CROSSTALK)

SMITH: And a lot of times, no connection. They are just people who are, as I said -- well, disaffected is a polite way of putting it.

They are unhappy with their lives. They're looking for some sort of answer. And so ISIS takes advantage of that and uses social media to recruit them. And it's something that we have to really be vigilant about and it's a difficult problem to get at.

BLITZER: But they are good in social media. They have got some pretty sophisticated online magazines.

SMITH: Oh, yes.

BLITZER: They recruit not only the U.S. but in Europe. But my only point is, why can't the U.S. counter that? Because we're pretty good at social media, too, I suspect.

SMITH: Yes.

Well, we're trying to counter it, but ISIS is trying to appeal to a particular group of people, to a group of people, to Muslims who feel like they have been under assault from the West. So, if the West then comes out with a message -- and we have tried this. We have done this in the al Qaeda war and a variety of different things.

We have used video games, we use comic books, we use different ways to try to appeal to people, to push them away from joining jihad. But when the message is coming from a Westerner, vs. coming from -- this is why we have to have that local support, why we have to have Muslims. And there are many that are out there doing that.

They are the ones who really need to read it. The messenger matters. OK? And if the messenger is the West, you're going to be less able to go after a disaffected Muslim youth than if you are a Muslim.

BLITZER: It would be great if Sunni Muslims were leading the charge against ISIS right now in big numbers.

SMITH: They have to.

BLITZER: Let them get the job done.

SMITH: Everyone keeps talking about winning. That's the only way we win, is if what you just said happens.

BLITZER: Congressman Adam Schiff, thanks very much for joining us.

SMITH: Thank you.

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