CARROLL, Iowa — Sen. Marco Rubio said Monday he wants to show the world how ISIS leaders “cry like babies” when captured in hopes of dissuading recruits from joining on to the extremist group.
Speaking to a small audience at a snow-covered ranch in Carroll, Iowa, Rubio offered further details on his plan to combat ISIS, responding to an audience question on the issue.
“I believe we should be carrying out attacks against Sunni leadership nodes, videotaping the whole thing and putting it up on Youtube so that the world can see these people are not invincible,” he said. “I want the world to see how these ISIS leaders cry like babies when they’re captured. I want the world to see how these ISIS leaders, once captured, begin to sing like canaries if they survive.”
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He added that he wants young fighters around the world thinking of joining the Islamic State to have “second thoughts” when they see “how easily humiliated they are by Americans.”
The bulk of the ground force fighting ISIS, Rubio reiterated, should be made up of Sunni Arabs, but he emphasized the need for U.S. special operations forces to coordinate logistics on the ground and carry out attacks on high-profile targets.
It was the most clarity he’s offered on the role special operations forces would play in a President Rubio’s strategy to combat ISIS, and it was part of what he said was a much more robust plan than the one President Obama’s enacted, which Rubio dismissed on Monday as “all symbolic.”
“It’s all symbolic, it’s all the least amount possible, and I don’t get it — other than the fact the doesn’t want to embroil us in another conflcit,” he said. — “Well guess what? We’re embroiled in another conflict, whether he wants it or not, and either they win or we win. I know what outcome I want.”
RELATED: Rubio faces leadership test and flunks The stop in Carroll marked Rubio’s fifth event, and fourth day, in Iowa, his longest visit yet to the all-important early nominating state, and one where he’s still struggling to break through in polling of the GOP presidential field. Rubio has only just begun to ramp up his organizing in the state, and has, throughout the weekend, drawn modest crowds of a few hundred supporters to his handful of town halls and rallies. Still, at the Carroll event on Monday morning, the approximately 100 attendees sounded taken with the Florida senator. “I agree with everything you said,” one questioner said to Rubio. This article first appeared on NBCNews.com.
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