President Obama Makes Stunning Reversal: Islamic State 'Not a JV Team'. On his debut on NBC 'Meet The Press' 9/7/2014, Chuck Todd Interview President Barack Obama: CHUCK TODD: Mr. President, welcome back to your 12th appearance on Meet the Press. PRESIDENT OBAMA: Great to see you. CHUCK TODD: Thanks for doing this. We start with a very basic question. Are you preparing the country to go back to war? PRESIDENT OBAMA: I'm preparing the country to make sure that we deal with a threat from ISIL. Keep in mind that this is something that we know how to do. We've been dealing with terrorist threats for quite some time. This administration has systematically dismantled Al Qaeda in the FATA. We just yesterday announced the fact that we had taken out the top leader of Al-Shabaab the terrorist-- organization in Somalia. ISIL poses a broader threat because of its territorial ambitions in Iraq and Syria. But the good news is coming back from the most recent NATO meeting is the entire international community understands that this is 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 got eyes on the problem, that we shifted resources, intelligence, reconnaissance. We did an assessment on the ground. The second step was to make sure that we protected American personnel, our embassies, our consulates. That included taking air strikes to ensure that towns like Erbil were not overrun, critical infrastructure, like the Mosul Dam was protected, and that we were able to engage in key humanitarian assistance programs that have saved thousands of lives. The next phase is now to start going on some offense. We have to get an Iraqi government in place. And I'm optimistic that next week, we should be able to get that done. And I will then meet with congressional leaders on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I'll make a speech and describe what our game plan's going to be going forward. But this is not going to be an announcement about U.S. ground troops. This is not the equivalent of the Iraq war. What this is is similar to the kinds of counterterrorism campaigns that we've been engaging in consistently over the last five, six, seven years. And the good news is is that because of American leadership, we have I believe, a broad-based coalition internationally and regionally to be able to deal with the problem. CHUCK TODD: What are you asking of the American people on Wednesday? You say you're giving a speech. That's the type of thing, I assume, you're preparing the country for something. What are you asking of them? What do you want--what do you want the American people to receive? PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well more than that, I just want the American people to understand the nature of the threat and how we're going to deal with it and to have confidence that we'll be able to deal with it. CHUCK TODD: You realize you're giving that speech the day before the 13th anniversary of 9/11. PRESIDENT OBAMA: But right. And I--I want everybody to understand that we have not seen any immediate intelligence about threats to the homeland from ISIL. That's not what this is about. What it's about is an organization that, if allowed to control significant amounts of territory, to amass more resources, more arms to attract more foreign fighters, including from areas like Europe, who have Europeans who have visas and then can travel to the United States unimpeded, that over time, that can be a serious threat to the homeland. In-- in the more immediate term, it's an imm-- it's a threat to friends, partners in the region and is causing all kinds of hardship. And we've seen the savagery not just in terms of how they dealt with the two Americans that had been taken hostage but the killing of thousands of innocents in-- in Iraq thousands of innocents in Syria, the kidnapping of women the complete disruption of entire villages. So what I'm going to be ask-- asking the American people to understand is, number one, this is a serious threat. Number two, we have the capacity to deal with it. Here's how we're going to deal with it. I am going to be asking 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 in the region--

• published: 07 Sep 2014
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