Obama Claims US 'Squeezing the Heart of ISIS,' Promises Continued Destruction
President Barack Obama attempted to assure the American public that the U.S. military and its allies are "squeezing the heart" of the Islamic State terror group, and vowed continued destruction of terror targets.
"We are hitting [ISIS] harder than ever," Obama told reporters on Monday.
"As we squeeze its heart, we'll make it harder for [ISIS] to pump its terror and propaganda to the rest of the world," he added.
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Obama went on to say that the U.S. destroys more of IS' forces every day, including "their fighting positions, bunkers and staging areas; their heavy weapons, bomb-making factories, compounds and training camps."
The President shared that his information stems from his meeting with the National Security Council, which informed him that IS has been losing its freedom of maneuver in a number of regions it had conquered throughout Iraq and Syria.
"In recent weeks, we've unleashed a new wave of strikes on their lifeline, their oil infrastructure, destroying hundreds of their tanker trucks, wells and refineries. And we're going to keep on hammering those," Obama continued.
Obama admitted that "progress needs to keep coming faster," but thanked the men and women in uniform who continue to risk their lives in military missions.
The White House's administration's narrative that ISIS is being defeated has been widely challenged by critics and especially by GOP presidential candidates, such as retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
In a FOX Business interview on Monday, Carson said that IS keeps giving itself legitimacy.
"What I would do is concentrate on taking that legitimacy away from them. Take away their caliphate … Their sources of income. Shut off all of their monetary channels so that they don't have the ability to pay people," Carson said.
"We need to attack their command and control centers … Cut off the passageways between them. Isolate them, put them on the run, keep them running all the time."
Syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer also said he does not believe America's strategy against IS is actually working.
"His own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Congress that we have not contained ISIS," Krauthammer offered. "We had the Secretary of Defense — Obama's own Secretary of Defense — last week telling Congress that we have not contained ISIS. It is obviously expanding."
Earlier in December, Obama's claims that IS has been contained were contradicted by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr.
"We have not contained ISIL. Tactically they have been contained in areas, but strategically they have spread since 2010," Dunford said, using an alternate name for the terror group.
The top military commander said, however, that the U.S. military has "the right elements of the strategy today to defeat ISIS."
Analysts, such as Edward A. Turzanski, the John Templeton Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, also told The Christian Post that Obama has only offered a tepid response to IS.
"The president has largely ignored the rise of ISIS," Turzanski told CP. "Most of his response has been rhetorical and it has not been helpful.
"All of this is dismissing of what has been happening in front of our eyes. ISIS has reached red lines, now they are acting not just in Syria and Iraq, but directing power into Europe," he added.
