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Military General: Carpet Bombing ISIS Not Effective Tactic

The U.S. military general in charge of the air war over Iraq and Syria said today that carpet bombing would not be an effective tool to fight ISIS.
By Jim Miklaszewski and Courtney Kube

The U.S. military general in charge of the air war over Iraq and Syria said today that carpet bombing would not be an effective tool to fight ISIS.

Asked about the claims of Sen. Ted Cruz and other presidential candidates that they would carpet bomb ISIS, Lieutenant General Charles Brown said that, "carpet bombing is not effective for the operation we're actually executing."

ISIS "doesn't actually mass itself where you could actually even use that kind of tactic, and that's a tactic that is really not effective for the fight we're actually executing today," he said.

Related: Cruz Won't Back Down on Carpet Bombing ISIS

ISIS puts themselves in "population centers" so with the GPS-guided munitions the U.S. uses they can "drop one or two munitions in an area and actually do the job well without having to do carpet bombing," Brown said.

He added that considering the law of armed conflict and the U.S. effort to minimize civilian casualties, "carpet-bombing is just, in my opinion, not the way to go."

During a debate last month, Cruz said that he will "apologize to nobody" for that promise.

      Jim Miklaszewski

      Jim Miklaszewski is the chief Pentagon correspondent for NBC News. On 9/11, he was the first at the scene to report that the Pentagon had been attacked and has since led the network's coverage of the war in Afghanistan.

      Since joining NBC in 1985, Miklaszewski was a White House correspondent during the Clinton and Bush administrations, covering President Clinton's transition from Little Rock, his many trips abroad including Moscow and the Middle East and his reelection. He was also an NBC floor reporter at the Democratic and Republican conventions in 1996 and 2000.

      In the Bush White House, Miklaszewski reported on the Gulf War with Iraq, summits with Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin and the Bush reelection campaign in 1992.

      Miklaszewski has logged considerable foreign experience with battlefront coverage of wars in Lebanon, El Salvador and the Falkland Islands. He also covered the United States air raid on Libya, and the "tanker wars" in the Persian Gulf.

      Courtney Kube

      Courtney Kube is a correspondent covering national security and the military for the NBC News Investigative Unit.