House Intelligence chairman: ‘ISIS is al Qaeda 6.0’

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said on Sunday that he saw the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) as a significant upgrade over previous radical Islamist terrorist groups.

“ISIS is al Qaeda 6.0,” Nunes told host Bob Schieffer on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“It’s really the sixth generation of al Qaeda,” the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence added.

A key difference between the two groups, Nunes said, was the global reach ISIS exerted well beyond the territories it controls.

“ISIS is not just in Iraq and Syria,” Nunes said.

“If your strategy is to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIS, and you’re not looking at places like North Africa, essentially you have a containment strategy, not a degrading strategy,” he said.

“I think we’re containing ISIS within the borders of Iraq and Syria,” Nunes added. “Outside of that, we aren’t doing much.”

Nunes additionally praised U.S. Special Forces for their dangerous raid on an ISIS compound in Syria on Saturday.

“It was successful and we’re happy that they got back safely,” Nunes said.

“It took guts for the president and our military to undertake this mission,” he said.

U.S. military forces killed Abu Sayyaf, a top ISIS leader, during the morning operation Saturday.

Nunes said on Sunday that the capture of Abu Sayyaf’s wife, Umm Sayyaf, might prove invaluable for better understanding the ISIS power structure.

“Many people have been advocating this strategy for a long time,” he said of such capture or kill missions against ISIS operatives.

“One would assume there would be a lot of intelligence at his hideout,” Nunes added.

Sayyaf reportedly helped control ISIS’s financial dealings involving gas and oil.

U.S. Special Forces additionally freed a young Yazidi woman that was reportedly the ISIS leader’s slave.