Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said President Barack Obama's comments that the U.S. intelligence community underestimated the threat from ISIS have left him "puzzled," Politico reported.
"This idea that somehow we didn't know this was happening, of course we knew it, I was there," McCain told CNN on Monday in reference to his trips to the region. "I'm just puzzled by the president, some of his statements, for example, he left behind a stable Iraq, all of that."
On Sunday, Obama said in an interview on CBS' "60 Minutes" that the United States had grossly "underestimated" the ISIS militants' capacity to regroup under the disguise of the Syrian civil war after being squashed in Iraq, Reuters reported.
"Our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper [the director of national intelligence], has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria," Obama said.
However, McCain said, "his intelligence comments - the intelligence people are pushing back hard. We predicted this and watched it, it was like watching a train wreck, and warning every step of the way that this was happening," he continued.
Known to be a frequent critic of Obama, the Arizona republican emphasized the United States' mistake of withdrawing troops from Iraq in 2011, according to The Hill. "It is a direct result of our failure to leave a residual force behind," he said.
"When they said we couldn't, they're not telling the truth," McCain said. "I was over there with [Sen.] Lindsey Graham [R-S.C.] and Joe Lieberman and we know it for a fact. And this idea that we didn't know what was happening, of course we knew it. We saw it happening."
Meanwhile, citing Obama's recognition that U.S-led military campaign against ISIS is helping the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has been accused of war crimes by the United Nations, McCain said a no-fly zone should be set up to limit Assad's air force.
"We need a no-fly zone," he said. "If he breaches it, we take out his air force."
On Friday, the Pentagon said it has not ruled out a no-fly zone.
"Assad is responsible for the deaths of nearly 200,000 people," McCain said. "He's one of the great war criminals there is."
