Obama to talk ISIS fight at Pentagon as US expands Libya role

President Barack Obama summoned top military and national security officials to the Pentagon on Thursday to assess what’s working and what’s not in the fight against the Islamic State group. Obama said at a news conference at the Pentagon.

President Barack Obama will not object to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump being given classified intelligence briefings, but cautioned that Trump has to “start acting like president” if he wants to be commander in chief.

On Monday, the president authorized a bombing campaign in Libya, at the behest of the current Libyan government, known as the Government of National Accord (GNA).

Obama, who earlier this week argued that Trump was unfit for the presidency, said he had never heard of anyone complaining that they had been cheated before the score had been tallied. “That means being able to receive these briefings and not spreading them around”, he said.

Obama and Vice President Joe Biden made the short trip across the Potomac River to sit down with Defense Secretary Ash Carter, CIA Director John Brennan and other Cabinet secretaries.

President Obama said Thursday that the Islamic State appears to be shifting its tactics to “high profile” attacks on tourists in cities around the world as it loses ground in its homeland of Iraq and Syria. “More than 14,000 strikes so far”, Obama said when briefing the media.

Obama also criticized Russian Federation for its continuing support of Syrian government attacks against opposition forces and its sieges of populated areas like Aleppo.

He says the payment was cash because the USA has no banking relationship with Iran. “It wasn’t a secret. We announced them to all of you”, Obama said. It was delivered to Iran on palettes aboard an unmarked plane. “And the worldwide community will continue to be at risk in getting sucked into the kind of global whack-a-mole, where we’re always reacting to the latest threat or a lone actor”, Obama said.

“The reason that we had to give them cash is precisely because we are so strict in maintaining sanctions, and we don’t have banking relations with Iran that we could not send them a check and we could not wire them money”, he said. “This wasn’t some nefarious deal”, he added, saying the payment was the result of an ongoing legal battle with Iran in the Hague. Trump’s campaign released a statement Thursday night accusing the administration of a “cover-up” and slamming “Obama’s refusal to acknowledge that these funds will end up being used to subsidize terror”.

Mired in chaos following the ouster of strongman Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, Libya became a target for ISIS extremists hoping to build a safe haven outside its initial territory in Iraq and Syria. And this week the US expanded its campaign against the group with a new front of airstrikes in Libya, to help the fledgling government there take back the city of Sirte.