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AP Newsbreak: Iraq warned of attacks before Paris assault

ISIS might be the “face of evil”, but President Barack Obama is determined that it will not deprive him of his chosen place in history.

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“That would be a mistake”, Mr. Obama said in a press conference on the sidelines of the ongoing G-20 summit in Turkey Monday.

When asked if enough is being militarily to keep USA citizens safe, Chris Lauritzen of IL reluctantly answered, “I would like to hope so, but I doubt it”.

Our challenge is to defeat that strategy, and step one is not to fall into the obvious trap the Islamic State has set.

“Today again I’m calling on leaders to commit the resources that this fight demands”, Obama added. French and USA officials said both countries oppose NATO’s involvement in the Syria war, arguing the current U.S.-led coalition is a better mechanism for prosecuting the war.

On the morning before the ISIS terrorist attacks in Paris, Obama was bragging that ISIS is contained. “And if you don’t understand that, you’re not ready to be commander-in-chief in my view”.

But, as in other countries, political pressures are building beneath Mr. Obama.

“We also have to remember that many of these refugees are victims of terrorism themselves”, Obama said.

He said his administration’s goal is “to degrade and ultimately destroy this barbaric terrorist organization”. The second issue is how to handle the spread of ISIS overseas and into Western nations. He was visibly irked by reporters’ questions that all basically boiled down to: “Mr. President, are your policies a disaster?”

But Obama, who in 2009 inherited a nation tired of war and who brought most troops in Iraq and Afghanistan home, declaringthat the “tide of war is receding”, is adamant he won’t change tack now despite a wave of criticism.

His 2012 election rival, Mitt Romney, on Monday warned that if Obama did not change course, the United States could be hit next. The 2016 presidential campaign has temporarily been turned on its head.

Obama’s deputy national security advisor, Ben Rhodes, said the United States will intensify air strikes on the IS group, the training and equipping of moderate rebel forces on the ground and the targeting of the extremists’ leaders.

“They have crossed a few kind of Rubicon”, said William McCants, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and author of “The ISIS Apocalypse”. “It’s important to get the strategy right”.

BOWMAN: So the president said, let’s continue the strategy I’ve come up with of working with rebel groups in Syria and with the Iraqi and Kurdish forces in Iraq in providing air cover for them even though the president said this strategy does not offer the, quote, “satisfaction of a neat headline or an immediate resolution”.

Those attacks were the deadliest acts of terrorism in France since the 1961 Vitry-Le-François train bombing.

“He sees the world as he likes to see it, as fantasy”, said Republican Presidential candidate Chris Christie over the weekend, joining a rising chorus of GOP candidates seeking to use the growth of ISIS for a political lift.

By the end of June 2015, ISIS had lost almost 10 percent of the remaining territory it held at the beginning of the year.

In 2013, after taking territory in Syria, it began referring to itself as “Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham” or “Islamic State in Iraq and Syria” – ISIS for short. In Paris, Hollande said he planned to meet with Obama and Putin in the coming days to create a broad anti-Islamic State coalition. And they’d secured a key highway between Iraq and Syria preventing ISIS from resupplying. But if Paris becomes cover for a policy that turns away Syrian refugees, then we will be abetting extremists who caricature the free world as the standard-bearer of anti-Muslim bigotry.

A number of state governors have already told the White House they will refuse to take in Syrians. “But as I said from the start, it’s going to take time”, he said, according to Bloomberg. In addition to the terror spree in Paris, the group has claimed responsibility for attacks in Lebanon and Turkey, as well as the downing of a Russian airline in Egypt.

Certainly, candidates like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is fighting for a foothold in a Republican primary process in which hawkish rhetoric sells, think so.

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For the United States “to carry out such precise attack…in the heartland of ISIS is going to make them very, very nervous”, Will McCants, an expert on jihadism and author of the recent book, “The ISIS Apocalypse”, told Business Insider on Friday.

Obama Large US troop deployment against IS'a mistake