“Some of you may recall we announced these payments in January, many months ago”.
Advertisement
“It wasn’t a secret”.
President Obama said it was important not to give in to fear. It was delivered to Iran on pallets aboard an unmarked plane.
As we have reported, ISIS has taken advantage of the chaos that has racked Libya and found footholds at multiple points in the country. “The reason is because we couldn’t send them a check and we couldn’t wire the money”.
On the question of whether Trump was qualified to handle nuclear weapons, Obama said that Americans are counting on their next president to be somebody who has the right “temperament and good judgment”.
As ISIS has lost territory within Syria and Iraq, Obama said, this has caused the group to shift toward “encouraging high-profile terrorist attacks, including in the United States”.
Speaking after meeting with top aides at the Pentagon, Obama said on Thursday that ISIL will continue to be a threat, highlighting the group’s ability to motivate so-called “lone wolf” supporters to launch small-scale attacks that are harder to detect and prevent.
The United States and allies – including most of the countries in the Islamic world – are working to counter violent extremism more broadly, Obama said.
Earlier this week, the Pentagon disclosed that the United States conducted airstrikes on an Islamic State stronghold in Sirte in a significant expansion of the US campaign against the Islamic State.
President Barack Obama says he shortened the sentences of more than 200 federal inmates this week to help cut the cycle of poverty and put families back together.
On Syria, the president criticized Russia’s support of government attacks against opposition forces and its sieges of cities such as Aleppo.
In response, Obama said his administration has ramped up USA efforts, including starting sensitive negotiations with Russian Federation to potentially coordinate a strategy to speed the defeat of the Islamic State group in Syria, and expanding the air campaign against the group to Libya.
The twin USA goals in Syria have been to end the violence that has claimed some 400,000 lives, according to United Nations estimates, and to seek a political process to replace Assad, whom Obama has said “must go”.
“I’m not confident we can trust the Russians and Vladimir Putin”, he said.
But, the number of IS fighters in Libya has dwindled from as many as 6,000 to now just some hundreds, weakened by an offensive launched in May by local militias, including many under the control of the United Nations -brokered government.
Obama also answered questions regarding the presidential race at the news conference, pushing back at Trump’s suggestions that the November election might be rigged, calling the assertion “ridiculous”. Earlier this week he said he believes Trump is “unfit” for office and went so far as to call on GOP leaders to renounce his candidacy.
On a separate matter, the president said he believes Trump should continue to receive national-security briefings, an established practice for all presidential candidates to ensure a smooth transition for the next administration.
Advertisement
The greatest danger posed by the group is one of overreaction, Obama said. “Russia may not be able to get there, either because they don’t want to or because they don’t have sufficient influence over Assad”.
