White House Misses Strategy Deadline

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is blasting the White House for missing the deadline to provide a review of its strategy to defeat ISIS. The Fiscal 2016 National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law last fall, called on the Departments of State and Defense to deliver their ?strategy to defeat violent extremism in the Middle East to Congress by Feb. 15, and lawmakers say the White House hasn’t followed through. “Unsurprisingly the administration cannot articulate a strategy for countering violent extremists in the Middle East,” HASC Chairman Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) said in a statement. “Time and again, the President has told us his strategy to defeat extremist groups like ISIS and al Qaeda is well underway; yet, months after the legal requirement was established, his administration cannot deliver that strategy to Congress. I fear the President’s failure to deliver this report says far more about the state of his strategy to defeat terrorists than any empty reassurance he may offer from the podium.” Defense Department spokesman Army Lt. Col. Joe Sowers said the Pentagon is actively working “with multiple interagency offices to complete this legal requirement per the NDAA and looks forward to submitting the completed report to Congress in the near-term.”