Defense Secretary Ash Carter sided with French President Francois Hollande on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” and confirmed, “America is at war with ISIS.”
Appearing on the morning news show on Thursday, Carter explained, “I’m glad the French are galvanized in joining the fight now.”
Host Mika Brzezinski asked Carter, “How can you assure the American public there is indeed a strategy and the leadership roll that America is taking in the fight against ISIS fully addresses the threat that it poses?”
“We have to defeat ISIL,” Carter responded. “We will defeat ISIL. You see the barbarism associated with this. And it is something that must be defeated.”
Scarborough followed up, “So you agree with the French president we’re at war with ISIS?”
“Yeah,” said Carter. “What we’re doing, just to remind you, is as Secretary of Defense, we are fighting every day. We have 3,500 people on the ground in Iraq. We’re flying air sorties everyday which are very intense, very effective, and we’re constantly innovating in how we’re using them. We’re starting to fuel convoys now. Which is something we’ve figured out how to do because ISIL uses the oil infrastructure as a way to raise money. We took out Jihadi John, we took out the head of ISIL in Libya, we’re running raids like the one that got Abu Sayyaf.”