Obama Admits: US Underestimated ISIL Threat

Local Editor

US President Barack Obama admitted Sunday that the United States had underestimated the opportunity that a collapsing Syria would provide for extremist militants to regroup and stage a sudden comeback.

Speaking to CBS News, Obama said that former al-Qaeda fighters driven from Iraq by US and local forces had been able to gather in Syria to form the newly dangerous ISIL group.

A US-led coalition of Arab and Western allies have begun an air campaign to counter the group, hitting targets in Iraq and Syria, which Obama called "ground zero for extremists around the world."

"I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria," he said, referring to his director of national intelligence.

Asked whether Washington has also overestimated the ability or will of Iraq's US-trained military to fight the extremists on its own, Obama said: "That's true. That's absolutely true."

The comments came in advance excerpts of an interview with the "60 Minutes" news show.

Obama said ISIL propagandists had become "very savvy" with social media and lured new recruits "who believed in their "jihadist" nonsense" from Europe, America and Australia, as well as from other countries.

In parallel, the US president said that part of the solution would be military, citing the US-led strikes to deny the ISIL group territory and resources, but that Syria and Iraq would also have to resolve their political crises.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team