The chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says President Barack Obama might be taking too long to respond to the growing threat from Islamic militants in Iraq and Syria. 
 
 “I’ve learned one thing about this president, and that is he’s very cautious. Maybe, in this instance, too cautious,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in an interview aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” 
 
 Feinstein said she agrees with an op-ed by Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina over the weekend in The New York Times calling for an immediate military plan to confront the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. 
 
 ISIL’s goal, she said, is to take the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and attack the American Embassy there. 
 
 Though Obama was widely criticized last week for saying the White House didn’t have a strategy for dealing with ISIL, Feinstein said the Pentagon and State Department have been planning for some time. And, she said, she hopes those plans will “coalesce” into a strategy that a coalition of allies can use to confront the militant group. 
 
 Feinstein did praise Obama for including the new Iraqi government in the planning. 
 
 “What I understand he is trying to do is give an opportunity for this new Iraqi government … to make a move that offers an alternative to the Sunni people in [the] country,” she said. 
 
 Read more about: Barack Obama, Iraq, Dianne Feinstein, Syria ||||| President Barack Obama’s address detailing the White House’s plan to combat the terrorist threat of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant received mixed reviews on Capitol Hill on Wednesday evening as lawmakers prepare to potentially give the president new authorities to strike against the militant group in Syria. 
 
 The speech was immediately criticized by some of Obama’s fiercest foreign policy opponents. Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz dubbed the speech “fundamentally unserious” on Fox News. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), using another acronym for ISIL, said on CNN that “the president really doesn’t have a grasp for how serious the threat from ISIS is.” 
 
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 “The president’s plan will likely be insufficient to destroy ISIS, which is the world’s largest, richest terrorist army,” McCain said in a subsequent statement with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). 
 
 (Full text, video of Obama's speech) 
 
 Senate Democrats praised the speech as a good approach to tackling the growing strength of ISIL in Iraq. 
 
 Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Obama’s plan was a “forceful strategy.” 
 
 “The president tonight laid out a forceful strategy to safeguard our security and that of our allies by rolling back and eventually destroying a brutal extremist group,” the Michigan Democrat said. “The president’s strategy calls for a broad coalition to support Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and religious minorities as they come together to fight a common enemy.” 
 
 House and Senate leaders will reconvene Thursday to chart a path forward for legislation giving Obama authority under the Authorization for Use of Military Force. House Republicans are weighing attaching the measure to a continuing resolution to fund the government. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is waiting for the House to move before deciding on the Senate’s path forward. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Obama: U.S. chasing ISIL 'wherever they exist') 
 
 Reid said Wednesday evening that hearings on the proposal will commence next week. 
 
 “The one element of the strategy outlined by the president tonight that requires immediate congressional action is granting his administration the authority to equip and train Syrian troops to fight ISIS,” he said. “I believe that Republicans and Democrats in Congress will come together in the week ahead in a strong show of support to grant the president this critical authority.” 
 
 Obama detailed a four-part strategy to weaken and eventually “degrade, and ultimately destroy” ISIL, which has been terrorizing Iraqi citizens and has beheaded two American journalists. The effort, Obama said, will include training Iraqi security forces and moderate Syrian rebels — a move the administration has avoided since the outbreak of the civil conflict in Syria two years ago. 
 
 “Our objective is clear: We will degrade, and ultimately destroy, ISIL through a comprehensive and sustained counter-terrorism strategy,” Obama said during the prime-time address. 
 
 “We must strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like ISIL, while pursuing the political solution necessary to solve Syria’s crisis once and for all.” 
 
 Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said his panel will move to draft a resolution giving Obama the congressional authority to wage a “prolonged military campaign.” 
 
 “President Obama showed important leadership in laying out an initial plan to confront the threat from ISIL before this barbaric group has the ability to execute a large-scale attack against U.S. interests at home or abroad,” he said. 
 
 Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), an outspoken anti-war advocate, said Obama’s polices need to be swiftly put to a congressional vote for authorization. 
 
 “The Constitution requires Congress to vote on the use of military force. This is not about this president. This is about any president and any Congress,” she said. 
 
 Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine said he supports a vote to institute a limited authority for U.S. action in the region and called Obama’s speech “strong.” 
 
 “He did what he had to do,” King said. 
 
 Across the Capitol, House Republicans were generally supportive of Obama’s strategy but broadly called for more specific details on the extent of U.S. involvement in the volatile region. Speaker John Boehner said he supports the plan to train Iraqi forces and Syrian rebels but is concerned that process could take years to implement. 
 
 “A speech is not the same thing as a strategy, however. While the president presented a compelling case for action, many questions remain about the way in which the president intends to act,” the Ohio Republican said. 
 
 Boehner has been part of a cadre of senior lawmakers who met with Obama and received classified briefings from the administration this week on the White House’s strategy to combat the Sunni militant group. 
 
 House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said Republicans still “require a level of commitment to this fight against terrorism not yet seen by this president.” 
 
 “We must recognize ISIL is but a symptom of a broader terrorist threat that has been ignored for too long by this administration,” the California Republican said. “Preventing the next 9/11 requires us to confront the reality that Al Qaeda has metastasized, and that radical terrorists operating out of sanctuaries in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and elsewhere pose a growing threat to the United States must be destroyed.” 
 
 House Republicans will hold an early morning conference meeting Thursday. 
 
 The chamber’s top Democrat, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, praised Obama for establishing a coalition to combat ISIL. 
 
 “I commend the president for his persistent, strong leadership in establishing a government of reconciliation in Iraq, and in his diplomatic efforts to have coordination among of our NATO allies and regional powers,” the Californian said. “Working with a broad coalition of partners and without using U.S. combat forces on the ground, we will lead a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy to dismantle the threat ISIS poses to the region and the United States.” 
 
 Obama’s proposals were panned by two Senate Democrats in tough reelection races who are eager to put distance between themselves and Obama. 
 
 “I will not give this president — or any other president — a blank check to begin another land war in Iraq,” said Colorado Sen. Mark Udall, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “As we have seen in the past, American boots on the ground cannot stamp out an extreme ideology, and the Iraqis must take responsibility for defending their own people.” 
 
 Alaska Sen. Mark Begich said he opposes Obama’s plan to arm Syrian rebels, saying, “The U.S. can’t continue to foot the bill of Middle East conflicts.” ||||| President Barack Obama is doubling down on his strategy to combat Islamic State in the face of rising calls from domestic allies and critics alike for a more aggressive campaign against the extremist group. 
 
 In the wake of the deadly Islamic State terrorist attack on Paris, Obama again ruled out on Monday dispatching a major U.S. ground force to Syria and Iraq, saying that would be a “serious mistake” and would push the nation along an unsustainable path of committing to the long-term occupation of countries across the Middle East and North Africa. 
 
 Instead, he made a plea for patience to let military, economic and diplomatic pressure work, even as he promised to adjust to conditions. 
 
 “There will be an intensification of the strategy that we put forward, but the strategy that we are putting forward is the strategy that ultimately is going to work,” Obama said at a news conference concluding the Group of 20 summit in Turkey, just 300 miles from a main battle zone in Syria. “But as I said from the start, it’s going to take time.” 
 
 On Defensive 
 
 The president became defensive as he was repeatedly questioned by reporters about whether he had underestimated Islamic State, whether his emphasis on diplomacy emboldened the extremists and whether he truly understands the enemy. His exasperation was evident in his response to the third such question posed. 
 
 “All right, so this is another variation on the same question,” he said. “Let me try it one last time.” 
 
 Shrinking the territory the terrorists control, getting local forces trained and equipped to keep them out and resolving the civil war in Syria -- “that ultimately is going to be what’s going to make a difference,” he said. “And it’s going to take some time, but it’s not something that at any stage in this process have we not been aware needs to be done.” 
 
 Obama’s critics in Congress have said that’s not enough, and their calls for more robust action have grown louder since the attacks in Paris on Friday that killed at least 129 people and wounded more than 300 others. 
 
 Ground Forces 
 
 Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a member of the Armed Services Committee and a Republican presidential candidate, has long been pushing for a no-fly zone in Syria. He now says American troops should join Arab and Turkish forces in ground combat in Syria against Islamic State, also known by the acronyms ISIL and ISIS. 
 
 “Let’s use their armies in a smart way and integrate our forces within a regional army” for a ground campaign to supplement airstrikes, Graham said Monday on MSNBC. 
 
 Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, usually an administration ally, joined the call for more force beyond the several dozen special operations advisers Obama has said the U.S. was deploying in Syria after the failure of a Defense Department program to train “moderate” rebels. 
 
 “I can’t tell you how many troops on the ground we need,” Feinstein said in a separate interview on MSNBC. “But we certainly need more than 50 special ops, and we need the ability to really make a difference on the ground.” 
 
 R. Nicholas Burns, who was Undersecretary of State under President George W. Bush, said Obama should step up the air campaign against Islamic State and arms shipments to groups in the region opposed to the terrorists. 
 
 Sending Weapons 
 
 “We can and should provide much greater conventional weaponry to the Syrian Kurds, to the Peshmerga and to some of the Arab Sunni,” Burns, who is now a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, said in an interview. “We’ve done so little of that. We’ve been so tentative for four years now.” 
 
 Obama lit into his domestic critics, particularly some Republicans running in the 2016 presidential campaign who’ve called for a more robust military campaign against Islamic State. 
 
 “Some of them seem to think that if I were just more bellicose in expressing what we’re doing that that would make a difference because that seems to be the only thing that they’re doing, is talking as if they’re tough,” Obama said. 
 
 Republican critics have offered few concrete alternatives, he said, with the exceptions of sending in ground forces or establishing no-fly zones, moves that open up a “whole set of questions that have to be answered.” 
 
 The president grew visibly irritated with repeated questions during his news conference about whether he should act more decisively or faster to destroy Islamic State. He said he is aware his approach doesn’t offer the satisfaction of a "neat headline" or an immediate solution. 
 
 “What I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of ‘American leadership’ or ‘America winning”’ that has “no relationship to what is actually going to work,” he said. 
 
 ‘Face of Evil’ 
 
 Obama called Islamic State “the face of evil” and insisted the U.S. and its allies are shrinking its hold in Syria and Iraq even as the group has demonstrated its ability to commit violence beyond the region. 
 
 The attacks in Paris last week were “a terrible and sickening setback” in what will be a long campaign against Islamic State, Obama said Monday, shortly after meeting with leaders of European countries at a summit in Turkey. 
 
 What won’t work, he said, is sending thousands more U.S. troops into the fight. 
 
 “We would see a repetition of what we’ve seen before, which is if you do not have local populations that are committed” to helping combat extremism, Obama said, the terrorists “resurface, unless we are prepared to have a permanent occupation of these countries.” 
 
 Obama’s strategy may be under pressure as well from some allies and other players, including Russia, which also is conducting airstrikes in Syria. Like France, Russia has been a target of Islamic State terrorism. A Russian passenger jet was blown out of the sky over Egypt in an attack blamed on the group. 
 
 While French President Francois Hollande, like Obama, has ruled out deploying ground troops in Syria in the midst of a civil war, there were signs that last Friday’s terrorist attack is spurring an accommodation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and has so far resisted U.S. and European demands that he depart eventually as part of a transition. 
 
 In a speech to a rare joint session of parliament in Versailles, Hollande said he would call Putin as well as Obama “to unite our efforts and seek a solution.”
– Republicans were today again busily piling on President Obama's strategy—or lack thereof—against Islamic State militants, but this week they were joined by a pretty prominent Democrat: Dianne Feinstein. "I’ve learned one thing about this president, and that is he’s very cautious," said the Senate Intel Committee chair, adding that, "maybe, in this instance, too cautious." Feinstein said she agreed with John McCain and Lindsey Graham's op-ed this weekend calling for military action, reports Politico, adding that she hopes the Pentagon and State Department can "coalesce" their planning into a single strategy to take on ISIS. Elsewhere on your Sunday dial: Mike Rogers: "This is an opportunity for the president to bring the country together so that we understand this ‘don’t-do-stupid-stuff’ policy isn’t working. If you have your own European allies saying, ‘Maybe the United States isn’t a leader on this issue,’ that’s a problem for us." John McCain: The Arizonan wants "additional US troops" to fight ISIS, and says Obama is "either in denial or overwhelmed. This is a direct threat to the United States of America. It may be one of the biggest we’ve ever faced." Dutch Ruppersberger: Referencing the White House's lack of ISIS strategy, the Maryland Democrat said, "It’s extremely urgent, but you just don’t rush in because the media’s talking about it. We will do what we have to do to protect us from ISIS."