NBC’s Richard Engel: Strategy to Take Back Ramadi Almost Laughable

Tuesday on MSNBC’s “NewsNation,” NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel discussed the new strategy of the Obama administration’s coalition against ISIS to take back the city of Ramadi and called it “almost laughable.”

Engel said, “The Iraqi government is not being effective so far in the campaign to fight against ISIS. The Iraqi army has collapsed now twice. First it collapsed in Mosel which helped create this whole problem and now in Ramadi. So whose coming in to try and liberate the city? It’s a combination of Sunni and Shiite militias. Sunni and Shiite militias that generally hate each other. Have a different opinion of what should happen to Ramadi once ISIS is pushed out of it. This could be incredibility  problematic. I think there is a real question here about if this is going to work or not.”

“It’s almost a laughable strategy frankly,” he added. “Somebody, well, Richard Hass a couple of days ago said it’s like trying to put out a fire with gasoline. You’re sending in competing militias to fight a radical group in a city 80 miles from Baghdad.”

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