While the US -led air and ground campaign against the group’s strongholds in Iraq and Syria have cost it territory, IS is adapting by reverting to high-profile attacks and by using the internet to recruit members, train them and encourage “lone wolf” attacks.
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While U.S. -led forces have been fighting militants in Syria and Iraq for years, Obama said it’s necessary to focus elsewhere, as well – in places like Libya, where Washington has been conducting airstrike campaigns for nearly nine months.
“The US remains prepared to work with Russian Federation to try to reduce the violence and strengthen our efforts against ISIL and al Qaeda in Syria, but so far Russian Federation has failed to take the necessary steps”, Obama said, using an alternative acronym for the militant group. “I am pleased with the progress that we’ve made on the ground in Iraq and Syria”.
Obama said all available intelligence suggests that while the militant group can be defeated, it’s likely that both affiliated and unaffiliated terror networks which share common goals are likely persist for years – overseas and in the United States.
Obama at a press briefing in Washington after meeting top military and security officials at the Pentagon said, “Two years ago ISIL was racing across Iraq to the outskirts of Baghdad itself and to many observers ISIL looked invincible”. “They’re based on a transaction and on mutual interest to the extent…we’re able to identify that with the Russians”.
President Barack Obama scoffed Thursday at Republican Donald Trump’s warnings earlier this week that the presidential election in November may be “rigged”.
“There was a paragraph in there that some may have caught, which we don’t know for a fact that this is true – but according to this reporting, the individual indicated that ISIL recognizes that it is harder to get its operatives into the United States”.
The main reason for the nominees’ briefings, Obama said, is to ensure that a president-elect, whether a Democrat or a Republican, does not step into the job unprepared.
“Given the success, the additional 560 USA support personnel that I ordered to Iraq last month will help turn this base into a logistical hub and launch bed for Iraqi forces as a push into Mosul”, he said.
The US recently stepped up its efforts against IS, bombing one of the group’s strongholds in Libya on Monday after a request by the UN-backed government.
This was the most recent of the president’s meetings to emphasize the whole-of-government approach needed to defeat ISIL.
Pressed on whether he had qualms about Trump receiving classified intelligence briefings, Obama said he would follow the law but warned that those who aspire to the White House “have got to start acting like president”.
“Those kinds of strategies can end up backfiring because in order for us to ultimately win this fight we cannot frame this as a clash of civilisations between the West and Islam”, he said.
“Of course the election won’t be rigged”. “We can defeat ourselves though if we make bad decisions”.
Obama, who denounced Trump in his speech at the Democratic National Convention and has since encouraged Republican leaders to withdraw their support from the business mogul, said such concerns were unfounded, calling the theory “ridiculous”. “What does that even mean?”
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Coalition and local forces continue to take out senior ISIL leaders and commanders, the president said, and this is having an effect on the organization’s command and control and its discipline.
