President Barack Obama on Monday touted the gains of an expanded air and ground campaign against Islamic State militants but said “progress needs to keep coming faster” after meeting with his National Security Council at the Pentagon. “In many places, ISIL has lost its freedom of maneuver because they know if they mass their forces, we will wipe them out”, Obama said, according to CNN.
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Still, Obama acknowledged that progress needs to continue more quickly.
On Friday, British Defense Minister Michael Fallon said the United Kingdom would not be sending ground forces into Iraq.
Deployment of helicopters and combat advisers would come only after a request from the Iraqi government in Baghdad, which so far has not sought that level of US military support, Carter said.
“We’ve been devising and executing such accelerating steps for some time now”, he said.
Obama listed several prominent ISIS leaders, commanders and killers who have been taken out, including Emwazi, “who brutally murdered Americans and others”. It’s rare for Obama to meet with his top military brass and homeland security experts outside the White House Situation Room; the session at the Defense Department was meant to convey the seriousness with which the President is approaching the military strategy in Iraq and Syria. “ISIL is dug in, including in urban areas, and they hide behind civilians, and use men, women and children as human shields”.
“Our message to them is simple: ‘You are next, ‘” he said in a strongly worded statement at the Pentagon after meeting on Monday with his national security team on the latest efforts to counter Islamic State.
Analysts say the public desire for more action reflects growing anxiety over the Islamic State after its attack in Paris, and the shootings in San Bernardino, California, carried out by a couple apparently inspired by the group. ISIL’s lost thousands of square miles of territory it once controlled in Syria and it will lose more.
Last month, the Pentagon said it would deploy approximately 100 more special operations troops to Iraq as a “specialized expeditionary targeting force” to conduct raids, free hostages, collect intelligence and capture Islamic State leaders in Iraq, the Los Angeles Times reported. He highlighted the anti-IS coalition’s mission to destroy the Islamic State from its root.
Speaking to reporters while travelling to the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, Mr Carter said Ankara needed to better control its border with Syria, particularly a roughly 98-km stretch bel-ieved to be used by ISIS for illicit trade and for shuttling foreign fighters back and forth. “That is what this campaign is doing”, the president said.
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The Obama administration has warned Trump’s rhetoric emboldens extremists looking to pull the US into a war with Islam.
