An interview recorded Thirsday and aired Friday morning saw President Obama claiming that ISIS has been successfully “contained” by the US military, and that the group is no longer capable of gaining ground in either Iraq or Syria.
Obama conceded that ISIS hadn’t been fully “decapitated” by the military operations, but credited US forces with keeping them from taking new territory, even though they’ve taken a massive amount of new territory in both Iraq and Syria since the US airstrikes began.
US officials are hyping their “progress” against ISIS, citing what they believe is “reasonable certainty” that a drone strike Thursday killed “Jihadi John” a British ISIS member who they’d sought to kill for some time.
The timing of Obama’s claim of containment likely couldn’t have been worse, however, as Thursday saw a massive ISIS dual suicide bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, and Friday evening saw an even bigger round of attacks in Paris, with speculation ISIS was involved there as well.
What a clown this guy is. Full credit for rolling back ISIS goes to Russia, the Syrian Army, plus Iranian & Hezbollah militias. The US airforce has done jack squat!
More correctly, ISIS hasn't been "rolled back". State parties never win a war against an insurgency. That's the lesson of history.
Brilliant Timing Dude!
As usual, Obama's best hope is that the rest of the world forgets he said that amongst the horror stories from Paris.
What gives you the idea that Obama was aware on Thursday that there were going to be attacks in Paris on Friday evening?
As usual, Obama is full of shit.
What a genius!! And giving US forces the credit as usual. Slime!!
Not a speech that would be particularly well received in France just now.
No. The French learned in Indo-China and Algeria that you cannot defeat an insurgency by military means. The British spent 30 years trying to "beat" the IRA in Northern Ireland and were able to bring the violence to an end only by capitulating to the insurgents on everything except formal independence (which the IRA no doubt beleives it will achieve through demographic changes anyway).
What is this nonsense that IS is an insurgency?
Yes, Uncle Sam is well satisfied with the current situation in Southwest Asia and Europe because the policy has been, and continues to be, "Controlled Chaos". Uncle Sam has been afraid that the Europeans might eventually object to his murderous rampage across the planet. But with these new attacks in Paris, the Europeans will be too busy putting out fires at home to focus on Uncle Sam's Crimes Against Humanity.
The fear and tensions resulting from the migration of Syrian refugees will combine with the Paris bombings to trigger a new round of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim riots across Europe, and Europe will soon look like Uncle Sam's police state.
The future continues to look very, very grim.
"Accross Europe". That's the point! Putin rampaging, NATO capitulating, a now tapering off flood of "refugees", many of them fake, which seems to have been orchestrated and now, the Paris attacks are all pushing Europe together. As always, when people are under external attack, they huddle closer together. That all this favours the EU was obvious from the reaction on French TV this morning of the Front National's usually ultra-nasty vice-president, hemming and hawing about "national unity" but still trying to focus on "certain policies". With regional elections 3 weeks from tomorrow, the FN (financed by Russian bankers said to be close to Putin!) clearly sees the climate of national unity as unfavourable to them in the run-up to the election, probably because they won't be able to play the populist attack dog without being accused of not standing by their country in its hour of need (which, of course, is precisely the mistake the far right made in 1940!).
Famous last words! This kind of thing went on for years in Vietnam. The Viet Cong were about to be defeated so many times that nobody could keep count!
What Obama meant to say is this: "We have imposed a moratorium on resupplying ISIS and forwarding new mercenaries to Iraq and Syria, so technically speaking, ISIS is contained. We'll repeal that moratorium next week, however, and no one will remember anything about ISIS being contained."
In addition to being a habitual liar Mr Obama has once again demonstrated his incompetence in understanding what is going on around him. Suggesting that the US has weakened ISIS in any way is completely removed from reality. ISIS is not a group of rioters in Ferguson, Missouri but a genuine threat to the US. Evidently Mr Obama fails to comprehend this.
Translation: We droned a few of them over there before they multiplied and followed the refugees to Paris and probably every other European city.
To be fair, Obama was talking about containment of ISIS in regards to their territorial hold.