Obama says US underestimated the rise of ISIS

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama acknowledged in an interview due to be broadcast on Sunday night that the United States underestimated the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) militant group while placing too much trust in the Iraqi military, allowing the region to become "ground zero for jihadists around the world."

In some of his most candid public remarks on the subject, Obama says in the interview with the CBS News program "60 Minutes" that it was "absolutely true" that the United States had erred in its assessments of both the Islamic State and the Iraqi military.

And while describing a range of measures to sharpen military pressure on the extremists, he said that, ultimately, a political outcome was necessary to ease frictions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims "in Iraq and Syria, in particular."

A political solution there might help ease the broader tensions between the populations that "are the biggest cause of conflict, not just in the Middle East, but in the world," Obama said, according to excerpts from the president's interview on the CBS News website.

The president's comments came as warplanes from the United States and allied Arab countries continued airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria, including some in a besieged Kurdish area of Syria near Turkey, in a campaign that the administration has said could take years.

The House speaker, Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio, suggested Sunday that the airstrike campaign might not be enough to contain and then destroy Islamic State militants, and that US ground forces might ultimately have to be deployed.

"These are barbarians," Boehner told George Stephanopoulos on the ABC News program "This Week." "They intend to kill us. And if we don't destroy them first, we're going to pay the price."

The image shows a frame from a video released by ISIS militants that purports to show the killing of journalist James Foley.

Stephanopoulos asked, "If no one else will step up, would you recommend putting American boots on the ground?"

"We have no choice," said Boehner, who previously said only that "somebody's boots have to be on the ground."

Obama, in the "60 Minutes" interview transcript, reiterates his opposition to deploying any significant number of American ground forces.

"We just have to push them back, and shrink their space, and go after their command and control, and their capacity, and their weapons, and their fueling, and cut off their financing, and work to eliminate the flow of foreign fighters," Obama said.

The United States, along with most other Western countries, was taken aback by the rapid advances of Islamic State as it seized control of sizable territory in Syria and Iraq. Obama said that the chaos of the Syrian civil war had been a key factor.

"Essentially what happened with ISIS was that you had al-Qaida in Iraq, which was a vicious group, but our Marines were able to quash with the help of Sunni tribes," he says in the "60 Minutes" transcript, using an acronym for the Islamic State.

A still image taken from a purported Islamic State video of British captive David Haines before he is beheaded.

"They went back underground," he adds, "but over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you had huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of that chaos."

As the group attracted foreign fighters from many countries, Obama said, "this became ground zero for jihadists around the world."