House Speaker John A. Boehner ridiculed President Obama for not taking action as Sunni militant sweep across Iraq, saying Mr. Obama is “taking a nap.”
“It’s not like we haven’t seen, over the last five or six months, these terrorists moving in, taking control of Western Iraq,” Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican said during his weekly press conference at the Capitol. “Now they’ve taken control of Mosul. They’re 100 miles from Baghdad. And what’s the president doing? Taking a nap.”
Mr. Boehner stopped short of advocating U.S. missile strikes that Iraq’s prime minister reportedly requested to stop the advancing militants, extremists loyal to the al Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
“I don’t know enough of the details about the airstrikes to comment whether we should or we shouldn’t, but it’s not like we haven’t seen this problem coming for over a year,” he said, echoing criticism that the Obama administration’s complete military pullout from Iraq left a power vacuum that terrorists filled.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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