United States President Barack Obama will on Wednesday announce the strategy to tackle the threat posed by the Islamic States, earlier known as ISIS, the terrorist outfit which has gained control over a large part of Iraq and Syria, and has brutally killed two American journalists in the recent past.
"On Wednesday I'll make a speech and describe what our game plan is going to be going forward. But this is not going to be an announcement about the US ground troops. This is not the equivalent of the Iraq War," Obama told NBC's ‘Meet the Press’ in an interview.
"What this is... is similar to the kinds of counter terrorism campaigns that we've been engaging in consistently over the last six-seven years," he said.
Obama said the entire international community understands that the IS was something that has to be dealt with.
"So what I have done over the last several months is first and foremost make sure that we've got eyes on the problem, that we shifted resources, intelligence, reconnaissance, we did an assessment on the ground," he added.
The US president said that in an important second step he ensured protection of American personnel, embassies and consulates. "That included taking air strikes to ensure that towns like Erbil were not overrun, critical infrastructure like the Mosul Dam was protected," said the US president.
Obama would meet the congressional leaders on Tuesday. "I am going to be asking the Congress to make sure that they understand and support what our plan is. And it's going to require some resources, I suspect, above what we are currently doing," Obama said.
Image: A fighter of the ISIS stands guard at checkpoint near the city of Baij, Iraq. Photograph: Reuters
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