Obama said cultural changes are required in regions like the Middle East and North Africa that are going through generational changes and for that it is needed to think how do messages of hate reach the individuals and the ways in which we can intervene.
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“Tragically, however, we have also seen that ISIL still has the ability to direct and inspire attacks. We don’t have a banking relationship with Iran, which is part of the pressure we applied on them”.
Then Obama was asked about whether he trusted Trump with nuclear weapons.
“We’re going to keep going after ISIL aggressively across every front of this campaign”, Obama said, using an acronym for IS.
Obama said he was confident that the Islamic State would continue to lose territory as Iraqi and Syrian forces, backed by American air power, close in on Mosul, Raqqa and strongholds near the Turkish border.
ISIL has not had a successful operation in Iraq or Syria in a year, Obama said. With significant US help, Iraq’s government is preparing a major offensive to reclaim the key northern city of Mosul, controlled by ISIS since June 2014.
In June, Obama warned that terrorist groups like the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) want to push the notion that “the West hates Muslims” as propaganda for recruitment.
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama says the USA does not pay ransom for hostages. “And do everything I can to help them succeed”, he said.
The U.S. and Russian Federation agreed to an initial cessation of hostilities in February, but the agreement has frayed in the past few months as rebels and forces allied to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have continued to clash, most recently in Aleppo where Assad’s forces have encircled rebel-held parts of the city.
Following an hours-long meeting of his National Security Council at the Pentagon on Thursday, the U.S. president said Trump’s broad-brush rhetorical attacks on Muslims worldwide, his enthusiasm for “bomb [ing] the shit” out of Isis and his proposed ban on Muslim immigration would “backfire”. “If you look at the 1970’s, or the 1980’s, or the 1990’s, there was some terrorist activity somewhere in the world that was brutal”, Obama said.
Obama said Thursday the terror threat to the homeland is serious, because of the lone actors or small cells that can become radicalized on the internet and carry out attacks on the Islamic State’s behalf.
President Obama dismissed GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s comment this week that the election may be “rigged” this year. “We can not frame this as a clash of civilizations between the West and Islam, that plays exactly into the hands of ISIL and the perversions and perverse interpretations of Islam that they’re putting forward”, he said.
“That means being able to receive these briefings and not spread them around”, he said. Though the number of IS fighters in Libya has dwindled, the U.S.is hoping to help Libya’s fledgling, United Nations -backed unity government finish the job.
After a slow start, the Obama administration appears on track to hit its goal of admitting 10,000 Syrian refugees into the United States before the end of September. “Many months ago. They were not a secret”.
He said the US-led coalition had carried out 14,000 air strikes against ISIS and 100 thousand sorties and each small victory has netted valuable intelligence from documents, thumb drives and other files seized from terrorists.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, offering worldwide cover, military aid and carrying out air strikes in opposition-held areas. White House officials have been on the defensive since the first report, from The Wall Street Journal, revealed new details about the money, which was delivered in non-U.S. currency.
