Ernst: Obama’s ISIS ‘victory lap is very premature’

CEDAR RAPIDS - President Barack Obama is premature in declaring victory over ISIS, according to Sen. Joni Ernst, a former Iowa Army National Guard member who served in the Iraq War.

'He's extremely premature with that comment,” Ernst said Thursday during a conference call with Iowa reporters, referring to the president telling military service members the terrorist organization 'is a shadow of its former self.”

In his last national security address, delivered at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., Obama cited the killing of Osama bin Laden and disruption of terrorist plots directed from Afghanistan and Pakistan in outlining progress in the war on terrorism.

'No foreign terrorist organization has successfully planned and executed an attack on our homeland - and it's not because they didn't try,” Obama said.

'We are breaking the back of (ISIS), we are taking away its safe havens and we've accomplished this at a cost of $10 billion over two years,” the president said. The U.S. used to spend that much each month at the peak of the Iraq War.

The president went on to warn service members that 'a deadly threat persists” and 'some form of violent extremism will be with us for years to come.”

That is a more accurate portrayal of the situation, Ernst said.

In letters to the president, Ernst said she has emphasized that ISIS is now taking hold in Latin America and continuing to develop in Southeast Asia and Africa.

'So he is very premature with those statements and he is taking our focus off ISIS,” said Ernst, who commanded a transportation unit in combat areas in Iraq and Kuwait. 'His victory lap is very premature.”

She hopes the incoming Trump administration takes the ISIS threat seriously because 'we can't allow ISIS to continue to spread and inspire other terrorists.”