Obama: Faster Progress Needed Against Islamic State

U.S. President Barack Obama has said he is sending Defense Secretary Ash Carter to the Middle East to work with coalition partners “on securing more military contributions” to the fight against Daesh.

APPHOTO DCEV119: President Barack Obama speaks at the Pentagon, Monday, Dec. 14, 2015, about the fight against the Islamic State group following a National Security Council meeting. Obama also says the USA strategy of hunting down leaders, training forces and stopping the group’s financing and propaganda is progressing. We all are hitting ISIL harder than ever.

After a series of Islamic State-linked attacks struck locations around the world over the last several months, President Obama said on Monday the United States has already begun an uptick in counter-strikes against the group.

Before the attacks in Paris last month, Obama boosted the number of USA warplanes in Turkey and ordered a small contingent of Special Operations forces to move into northern Syria to help the moderate opposition there take key terrain from ISIS. ISIL has lost 40 percent of the areas it once controlled in Iraq and thousands of square miles in Syria, he noted.

He asserted that the U.S. will go after the ISIS in their stronghold in Raqqa, Iraq and said that the terror group could not hide anymore and that his message was simple: “You are next”.

“The American people are smart enough to know when something is working or not, and it’s obvious that the president’s current strategy isn’t working”, Republican House Majority leader Kevin McCarthy said in response to Obama’s Pentagon appearance.

But the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, have brought national security concerns to the top of Americans’ minds, forcing Obama to try to convince the public once again that he has the right plan for destroying Islamic extremists.

Listing Islamic State leaders taken out by USA airstrikes – including the executioner known as “Jihadi John” – Obama sought to convey forward momentum in the battle, even as Americans’ fears of an attack inside the United States grow.

Obama’s remarks – which came during a rare visit to the Pentagon to meet with top commanders – amounted to an update on progress of the war and not a revision of the tactics or strategy.

“The President would not be satisfied unless ISIS is defeated and degraded”, the White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters later at his daily news conference. Obama is also slated to attend a briefing at the National Counterterrorism Center later in the week. ISIS has been bringing in at least $1 million a day from black market oil sales to fund their global terrorist operations, yet we have just now started hitting their oil trucks a few weeks ago.

Obama said coalition strikes have been complicated by the fact IS has been embedded in Iraq and Syria for years, using civilians as human shields.