Obama: No Ground War With IS Militants

Terror, he said, was like a cancer which needed to be tackled with a “comprehensive” strategy which would involve working with troops on the ground. And it is already spurring changes in how the US grapples with ISIS.

The United States and its allies conducted 17 air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq and 12 in Syria on Saturday, the coalition leading the operations said in a statement.

The report stands in stark contrast to earlier White House assurances that ISIS had been “contained” in Iraq and Syria. Speaking in English, the fighter tells members of the anti-ISIS coalition in Syria and Iraq to back off or “there will be no safety in this world from our guns, from our bullets and from our explosives”.

The US-led coalition has been carrying out strikes against IS in Syria since last September, expanding a campaign that began with raids in neighbouring Iraq.

The eight-page report was compiled by a team of analysts from the CIA, NSA, and other agencies, the website reported. “We have to fight them in the air”. “It was lots of great charts showing countries highlighted across the globe, with some groups having pledged allegiance to ISIS and others leaning towards it”.

IS controls large stretches of territory in the two countries, which it describes as an Islamic “caliphate”.

“SOCOM plays an important role in the critical analysis of trans-regional threats, providing assessments that look across the seams between geographic commands, and helping the department to synchronize military efforts with all elements of national power”, said Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis Saturday. Without these ground troops, fighting Daesh timidly as is being done now will not be beneficial especially in light of Daesh’s gains from Iranian Russian intervention supporting its bases in Syria and Iraq.

However, the Daily Beast reported that Carter’s announcement took military planners by surprise, since they had yet to finalize important details, including the rules of engagement under which such raids would be carried out. Since then, the U.S.-led coalition has dropped 20,600 munitions on targets in Iraq and 11,000 in Syria. “You can not defeat them if you do not have buy-in from the general public and the government”, he said.

He also pointed out that “it is in the interest of Britain, it is in the interest of France, but it is also in the interest of Cyprus that we do deal with this terrorism for once and for all”.