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Jeb Criticizes Cruz’s Syria Plan as ‘Foolish

The threat ISIS poses to the United States is one of anxiety, economic instability, which can change people’s way of life, not necessarily threaten U.S. homeland security, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush said Sunday.

In an appearance on CBS’s “face the Nation” program Sunday morning, Bush said the level of the threat from ISIS is one that “can stop the Los Angeles school system for opening for two days because of a random email from Germany; can change our way of life; can hurt our prospects economically, [and] can destabilize our country for sure.”

“Will there be an army invading the United States? No. We’re still capable of defending the homeland from that kind of threat. But are we capable of defending against people that are energized against this radical Islamic terrorism? That’s the challenge we face right now,” he asserted.

In the interview, Jeb also criticized Senator Ted Cruz’s proposal to carpet bomb ISIS strongholds in Syria as “foolish.”

“There are 800,000 people who live in Mosul. There’s probably 5,000 Islamic terrorists who control the place. Are we going to destroy 800,000 lives with a carpet bombing activity? This is foolish. It is absolutely foolish,” said Bush. Adding it was “kind of clumsy” when Cruz was forced to back away from it during last week’s TV debate. “It was a little unusual to see him stumble a bit. But that’s what we need to avoid. If you want to develop the coalition as you asked, you can’t talk about carpet bombing Mosul or carpet bombing held territory by ISIS that brings huge collateral damage.”

Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio, appearing on the same program, also criticized Cruz over his anti-interventionist stance on Syria. “The argument that Assad is not an enemy of America is wrong,” he said. “Assad is the reason why there’s a refugee crisis… Assad is conducting an attack of sectarian cleansing. He is conducting a program of getting rid of all the Sunnis. And that is forcing hundreds of thousands of people to destabilize Europe and Jordan and trying to come into the United States.”

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