Obama: US 'Underestimated' Islamic State Threat
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- In an exclusive interview with "60 Minutes," President Barack Obama admits United States intelligence underestimated the threat from ISIS.
"During the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of that chaos and attract foreign fighters," Obama said in the interview which aired Sunday.
The president also said the U.S. overestimated the Iraqi army's ability and will to fight, CBS 2's Marcia Kramer reported.
"The Iraqis have to be willing to fight and they have to be willing to fight in a non-sectarian way: Shia, Sunni and Kurd alongside each other against this cancer in their midst," Obama said.
The U.S. has been bombarding ISIS targets in Iraq with airstrikes since early August. It began hitting locations in Syria almost a week ago with a coalition of international partners. The president insists he will not put American combat troops on the ground to secure the region, but House Speaker John Boehner said if allies or local forces can't get the job done, the US may have no choice.
"These are barbarians. They intend to kill us and if we don't destroy them first, we're going to pay the price," Boehner said Sunday on ABC's "This Week.''
The president said he wants to limit our ground presence to the 1,600 advisers and special operations troops he already has ordered to Iraq.
But some of his military advisers said it will take up to 15,000 ground troops to crush the threat of ISIS.
The president said that beyond military might, there needs to be a political solution.
On Sunday, U.S.-led coalition airstrikes hit an oil refinery held by ISIS in northern Syria near the Turkish border.
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