Obama to get ISIS war 'update' at Pentagon
President Obama is making a rare trip to the Pentagon on Monday, to meet with his top national security advisers to discuss the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
But don't expect any serious reevaluation of the current strategy against ISIS, the White House said Friday.
"At this point ... it is an update," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters.
However, the last time the president went to get such an update at the Pentagon in July, it led to adecision to send about 50 U.S. special operations forces into Syria, among other steps to intensify the campaign.
During that meeting, the president "reaffirmed to all of us in the room that he was willing to hear all options of doing more in Iraq and Syria, as long as they would produce strategic success vice just tactical success," a senior defense official told Pentagon reporters during a background briefing on Oct. 30, after the White House announced the new steps.
"We went about taking a very hard look at what was working, what wasn't working, in both Iraq and Syria, and what we thought might help us enhance our campaign," she said.
Other steps included striking different kinds of oil infrastructure used by ISIS to finance its operations, and delivering ammunition to Syrian opposition rebels. The Pentagon announced about a month later that about 200 more special operations forces would deploy to the region to conduct raids in Iraq and Syria.
While the steps were welcomed by critics of the president's strategy, it did not quell calls for him to do more to wipe out the terrorist group.
And the president has been under increasing pressure to do more, especially after terrorist attacks across Paris on Nov. 13 that killed 130, and a mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., earlier this month that killed 14.
The White House acknowledged those calls, but said that "those who are most frequent in voicing those calls, do not themselves have alternative solutions that they have put on the table."
Earnest specifically pointed to a tweet by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a 2016 Republican presidential candidate, which said, "If I'm elected president, we won’t weaken ISIS. We won’t degrade ISIS. We will utterly destroy ISIS."
"Just to cite one example, I know that after the president delivered his address to the nation from the oval office, that — that Senator Cruz, in the thoughtful medium known as Twitter, suggested that if he were president of the United States, he would order the Department of Defense to destroy ISIL," Earnest said, using another acronym for ISIS.
"This, of course, is the mandate that the president has given for our entire national security team, and all of our allies and partners in the coalition since September of 2014," Earnest said.Another news article that reads more like propaganda from the demagogue in chief. who spends his time targeting members of the GOP instead of ISIS. The last sentence in the excerpt proves how dishonest the Obama administration is at every level. The White House has admitted they can destroy ISIS but they REFUSE to do it. This administration has publicly shifted the strategy from degrading and destroying ISS to one of containment.
The battle with ISIS was always complicated by the fact that this administration helped arm and supply them in their covert war with Assad in Syria and the fact that this administrations reelection narrative hinged on the fact that Al Qaeda and their affiliates were on on run.
As Obama goes to the Pentagon to be briefed with cooked intel to reinforce more of his false narratives and delusional foreign policy. Americans should wonder if Obama was projecting when he called ISIS the jayvee team.
Other blogs:
The Obama Administration's Political Agenda Endangers Our Freedom & Security
U.S. Report Warns of ISIS Creating Fake Passports
