US has ‘contained’ Islamic State group, claims Barack Obama

“A year later, Kurdish forces, a few number of thousands of them, have launched into the attack to push Daesh (ISIS) out of that area”, Allen said Thursday, referring to the massacre last year of thousands of members of the Yazidi minority who lived in the region as tens of thousands more sought refuge on Mount Sinjar from ISIS’ onslaught. “I think it’s fair to say that over the last several years I’ve had access to all the best military minds in the country and all the best foreign policy minds in the country”. And you look for the easiest place to do that?

Stephanopoulos asked Obama if ISIS was gaining in strength, to which Obama denied they were.

In Syria, he said, ‘they’ll come in, they’ll leave. “Take that from them”, Carson said.

“What we’ve been able to do is to shape a strategy that first and foremost contained- the momentum that ISIL had gained”, he added, using the government’s acronym for ISIS.

Obama said the group was not getting stronger and had not gained ground in Iraq, although its militants still pose a threat.

56 percent of Republicans and 54 percent of conservatives support sending ground troops to Iraq and Syria. ISIL, or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, is an alternative name for the terorrist organization. But he announced two weeks ago that a small group of less than 50 US special ops soldiers would go to Syria to bolster rebel forces there in the fight against ISIS. We’ve made a few progress in trying to reduce the flow of foreign fighters, ‘ he said of the group, which the USA government refers to by its alternative name, ISIL.

Obama’s comments were taped on Thursday, just as the United States helped back up a Kurdish offensive against the militants in northern Iraq while also targeting a British Islamic State leader known as “Jihadi John”. The jihadist was the main figure in the ISIS videos showing the brutal executions of American and western hostages, including USA journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff. The president warned that regional strife will persist “until we get the Syria political situation resolved”.

‘Until Assad is no longer a lightning rod for Sunnis in Syria and that entire region is no longer a proxy war for Shia-Sunni conflict, we’re going to continue to have problems, ‘ Obama said in the interview, conducted yesterday from the White House.