The invasion of Iraq was one topic for the U-S Senate candidates from Kansas in a debate Wednesday night in Wichita. The debate was webcast on JC Post.

Independent challenger Greg Orman felt the U.S. might not have been as thoughtful as necessary in the invasion of Iraq many years ago. He noted thousands of lives have been lost.

“We’ve had thousands of people critically injured. We’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars, and will spend hundreds of billions of dollars more if we honor our commitment to our veterans. All in an effort to prevent Muslim extremists from having a stronghold in the Middle East.” Orman added the vacuum in Iraq and the civil war in Syria is allowing that. ” I do believe we need to be aggressive in terms of rooting out ISIS. I do believe we need to follow the air campaign we’re doing. We need to protect our diplomatic assets on the ground, and we need to train the Iraqi’s to be able to solve that problem in their country with our support.”

Incumbent Republican Pat Roberts the problem with ISIS goes to a larger problem, as he sees it….the President is trying to lead by following on national security and foreign affairs. “When you lead by following there’s a vacuum. When there’s a vacuum bad people fill it. And if you don’t deal with the people it gets worse, much worse, and that’s where we are today.”

“We have a situation where in Iraq where just today ( Wednesday ) the President said we’re winning with regards to ISIS, said Roberts. “We’re not!’

Roberts referred to the 1st Infantry Division Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion from Fort Riley that was recently ordered to deploy to Iraq for one year. “The ISIS savage terrorist group is within about 20 miles of the Baghdad Airport. We have the Big Red One now in Baghdad. We have 450 members of the Big Red One there. We have 150 Marines there.”