Mr. Obama announced his plan late Wednesday in a nationally televised speech and urged Congress to support the mission against the group, which had previously been known as ISIL or ISIS.Republican Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told VOA he and many other Republicans believe the president waited too long to take action."The unfortunate thing is that in waiting for the last seven months, ISIL has been able to get their hands not only the weapons, but also on the cash,taken from the Central Bank in Mosul, by robbing a lot of other banks along the way," Royce said."So they have become a bigger challenge, a bigger threat.”New York Democrat Eliot Engel told VOA President Obama gave a "very compelling" argument for going after the Islamic State."if we don’t disrupt and dismantle and destroy ISIS,they will also use Iraq and Syria as a no man's land to plot terrorist attacks against the United States' homeland and our allies.Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn told VOA she is glad the president is realizing the threat of the Islamic State group.But she would have liked him to give more details about his strategy for combating the group, such as those related to the international coalition."When he talks about following the strategy that they used in Somalia and Yemen,that hasn’t yielded the results that we would like to see, that’s gone on for several years now," Blackburn said.
