Speaking dismissively of the global prowess of Isis, Obama said: “They’re a bunch of killers with good social media”. But the White House press leak about the Obama-Putin conversation did not repeat that complaint.
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After the Syrian uprising against Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship turning violent, the tensions between al-Qaeda in Iraq and al-Qaeda central broke to the surface. More recently, the militant group has started exporting violence outside its stronghold, radiating fears across the West. US officials have said IS aspires to attack America but they have played down any specific threat.
“The most powerful tool we have is to say we are not afraid”, Obama said. We’ll keep standing up for the human rights and dignity of all people – because that is contrary to what these terrorists believe.
It seems President Obama is more likely to attack Republicans than the Islamic State.
In the president’s weekly radio address, taped by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and released on Saturday morning, Mr. Biden insisted that refugees from Syria face “the most extensive screening” of anybody entering the United States.
These comments follow days of mounting criticism – from Democrats and Republicans alike – over the administration’s handling of ISIS and the Syrian refugee crisis.
Monday, at the G-20 Summit in Turkey, an annoyed Obama, defensively snapped at reporters who asked about his underestimation of ISIS and the effectiveness of his military strategy against the terror army.
Next, we need to show leadership again in the broader Middle East. Our close ally Israel and our Sunni Arab allies are rightfully confused and dismayed by this administration’s myopic focus on a nuclear deal with the Shia state sponsor of terror and their biggest security threat, Iran. “We will cut down their finances, we will hunt them down, we will destroy ISIL”, he said.
Still, such gains appear to have been largely overshadowed by the horrors brought to Paris. And at least six of whom appear to have traveled to and from Syria to train and fight alongside ISIS. A shrinking 37% would disapprove of such a move.
“As we look at foreign fighter flows, there have been people who have gone from China into Syria”, Rhodes stated.
And that the attacks in Paris are not the only ones that the Islamic State wants to implement. Tens of thousands of Rohingya have fled persecution by Myanmar’s Buddhist majority and landed in Malaysia, where Obama was attending a regional economic summit.
“Every few months, I go to Walter Reed (Army Medical Center), and I see a 25-year-old kid who is paralyzed or has lost his limbs, and some of those are people I’ve ordered into battle”, Obama said, “so I can’t afford to play some of the political games that others may”. Brennan said he and his Russian counterpart had begun exchanging intelligence focused primarily on the flow of terrorists from Russia into Iraq and Syria but that now U.S.-Russian cooperation needed to be “enhanced”.
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Gergen questioned why French and Russian warplanes were bombing targets in the self-declared ISIS capital of Raqqa only after attacks in Paris and on the Metrojet airliner.
