Hillary Clinton broke with President Obama during Saturday’s Democratic primary debate when she said that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria can’t just be “contained,” a phrase Obama used in a Friday interview that aired just hours before the Paris terror attacks.
{mosads}”We have to look at ISIS as a leading threat of an international terror network, it cannot be contained, it must be defeated,” the former secretary od State said during CBS’s debate.
“There is no question if we summon our resources, both our leadership resources and all of the tools at our disposal … we can bring people together.”
The front-runner for the party’s nomination then immediately backed Obama’s calls to “support those who take the fight to ISIS,” but she added that she had pushed for the U.S. government to help train and equip Syrian rebels “very early.” The Obama administration initially balked at that plan, but later began to train rebels. However, generals admitted recently that only a small handful had been trained and the administration later halted the program.
Obama told ABC News that ISIS is not “gaining strength” in an interview that aired the morning before the terror attacks in France that killed more than 100 people.
“Our goal has been first to contain and we have contained them,” Obama said.
“They have not gained ground in Iraq, and in Syria they’ll come in, they’ll leave, but you don’t see this systemic march by [ISIS] across the terrain.”