President Barack Obama on Monday told Americans the U.S.-led coalition is hitting the Islamic State militant group, better known as ISIS, “harder than ever”.
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The US strategy of hunting down leaders in Iraq and Syria, training local forces, and stopping ISIL’s financing and propaganda is progressing, he said.
Hundreds of oil tankers and refineries have been targeted and the terrorists have lost about 40 percent of the territory it once controlled in Iraq, as well as thousands of square miles in Syria.
The aim of Obama’s visit to the Pentagon was to get an update on the initiatives discussed during a National Security Council meeting in July.
But Obama has declined to further escalate the fight in Iraq by sending in Apache helicopters and Special Operations ground advisers to fight alongside front-line Iraqi units and call in airstrikes.
After a series of Islamic State-linked attacks struck locations around the world over the last several months, President Obama said on Monday the United States has already begun an uptick in counter-strikes against the group. “Even as were relentless we need to be smart, targeting ISIL surgically and with precision”, he said.
Other people who attended the meeting included Secretary of State John Kerry, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, presidential envoy in the anti-ISIS coalition Brett McGurk, and Rob Malley, the new ISIS czar, among others.
President Obama dispatched his defense secretary to Iraq on Monday to review the ongoing fight against ISIS – and insisted coalition forces were hitting the murderous militants “harder than ever”.
“Our Special Operations Forces are on the ground, because we’re going to hunt down these terrorists wherever they try to hide”, Obama said in his weekly radio address Saturday.
Commentators say the speech was as much to ease public concern in the United States where around 70 percent believe the risk of an attack is at least somewhat high.
This week, he said, “we’ll move forward on all fronts”.
The President is expected to give a news conference after he is briefed by intelligence and security agencies at the National Counterterrorism Center on Thursday. Obama announced that Defense Secretary Ash Carter will travel to the Middle East to talk to allies there.
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Then, in only his third address to the nation from the Oval Office, Obama tried to reassure Americans unnerved by the San Bernardino slaughter that the USA had a handle on the “evolving” threat of terrorism and vowed to destroy ISIS.
