Obama also managed to get in some digs at Donald Trump’s fitness for handling similarly complicated matters, should he become president. “What does this say about your party that this is your standard-bearer?” he challenged.
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POTUS’ remarks Thursday come as the First Family is about to depart for its annual summer vacation on Martha’s Vineyard from August 6 to the 21.
“And thats why, as we discuss today, were going to keep going after ISIL (ISIS) aggressively across every front of this campaign”, Obama told reporters after a meeting with his national security team at the Pentagon yesterday.
President Obama held a news conference at the Pentagon on Thursday following a national security briefing on the fight against ISIS.
Obama says the group may continue to inspire people to carry out lone wolf-type attacks on subways or parades to sow fear and elevate its profile. “Thousands of documents, thumb drives [and] digital files which we will continue to use to keep destroying ISIL’s networks and stop foreign fighters”.
“There are going to be some bottom lines that we expect for us to cooperate with Russian Federation beyond the sort of deconfliction that we’re now doing-and that means restraint on the part of the regime that so far has not been forthcoming”, Mr. Obama said.
“We delivered another blow last month when we took out a top ISIL leader in Afghanistan, Umar Khalifa”, Obama said. “Even ISIL’s leaders know they’re going to keep losing”, abc.net.au quoted Obama, as saying.
The session comes as the USA announced airstrikes in and around the Libyan city of Sirte this week in a notable expansion of the U.S.-led coalition’s military mission against ISIS.
According to US officials, the Islamic State’s affiliate in Libya has emerged as its most powerful branch.
“I am pleased with the progress that we’ve made on the ground in Iraq and Syria”, Obama said, but added: “We’re far from freeing Mosul and Raqqa”. Moreover, since Obama on Tuesday said Trump was “unfit” to serve, what would he say if Trump won?
He said the threat to the U.S. mainland is “serious”, due to the difficulties of detecting attacks which involve minimal communications to a broader network, and warned that America’s lax gun restrictions enabled Isis to carry out small-scale assaults. “The reason it is called terrorism is that these are weak enemies that can’t match us in conventional power, but what they can do is make us scared”.
The president said the United States must do a better job of “draining” the ideology that is behind the attacks.
The group, however, still maintains strongholds in the region, and the fight in Syria has bogged down. “That plays exactly into the hands of ISIL and the perversions and perverse interpretations of Islam that they’re putting forward”.
Obama, a Democrat who endorsed his former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the 2016 White House race, has made clear his dismay over Trump, a NY businessman who has proposed temporarily banning Muslims from entering the United States and building a wall on the USA border with Mexico. If they want to be president they have got to start acting like (a) president.
Perhaps Obama used the words “nuclear triad” – a reference to launching weapons from the air, land and sea – because Trump seemed to have absolutely no idea what the term meant when he was asked about it at a Republican debate last December.
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“Of course the election won’t be rigged”.
