WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama acknowledged that U.S. intelligence agencies underestimated the threat from Islamic State militants and overestimated the ability and will of Iraq's army to fight.
Questioning Obama's strategy to destroy the group, House Speaker John Boehner said the U.S. may have "no choice" but to send in American troops if the mix of U.S.-led airstrikes and a ground campaign reliant on Iraqi forces, Kurdish fighters and soon-to-be trained Syrian rebels fails to achieve that goal.
Boehner, in an interview Sunday for ABC's This Week, agreed with the White House that Obama had the power to order airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, but said he believes Congress should consider a resolution authorizing the use of force for this specific mission.
"These are barbarians," Boehner said of Islamic State forces. "They intend to kill us, and if we don't destroy them first, we're going to pay the price."
Boehner, R-Ohio, said he would send lawmakers back to Washington -- they are not set to return until after the Nov. 4 elections -- if Obama were to seek such a resolution.
Obama described the U.S. intelligence assessments in response to a question during a 60 Minutes interview on CBS that aired Sunday night. He was asked about how Islamic State fighters had come to control so much territory in Syria and Iraq and whether it was a surprise to him.
The president said that during the Iraq War, U.S. military forces with the help of Iraq's Sunni tribes were able to quash al-Qaida fighters, who went "back underground."
"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," Obama said, according to an excerpt released before the show aired.
He noted that his director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has acknowledged that the U.S. "underestimated what had been taking place in Syria." Obama also said it was "absolutely true" that the U.S. overestimated the ability and will of the Iraqi army to fight the radical Sunni group, which also controls part of northern Iraq.
"Where you've got states that are failing or in the midst of civil war, these kinds of organizations thrive," he said.
Obama also gave voice to the conundrum at the heart of his Syria policy, in that the campaign against the Islamic State and an al-Qaida affiliate in Syria is helping Syrian President Bashar Assad, a man the United Nations has accused of war crimes.
"I recognize the contradiction in a contradictory land and a contradictory circumstance," Obama said. "We are not going to stabilize Syria under the rule of Assad," whose government has committed "terrible atrocities," Obama said.
But Obama said his first priority is defeating the extremists who are threatening Iraq and the West. To defeat them, he acknowledged, would require a competent local ground force.
"Right now, we've got a campaign plan that has a strong chance for success in Iraq," the president said. "Syria is a more challenging situation."
Obama, though, made clear he has no interest in a major U.S. ground presence beyond the 1,600 American advisers and special operations troops he already has ordered to Iraq.
The interview was Obama's first since the U.S. expanded its efforts against Islamic State extremists in Iraq by conducting airstrikes in Syria with the help of five Arab nations. The newly formed coalition is the biggest U.S.-Arab military venture since the 1991 war to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation.
The Obama administration has cited intelligence weaknesses before.
At an August news conference, he said "there is no doubt" that the Islamic State group's advance "has been more rapid than the intelligence estimates" suggested it would be.
U.S. intelligence agencies, he said, did not have "a full appreciation of the degree to which the Iraqi security forces, when they're far away from Baghdad, did not have the incentive or the capacity to hold ground against an aggressive adversary."
At an intelligence conference this month, National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers expressed regret that his agency had not been "a little stronger" in tracking the Islamic State's shift "from an insurgency to an organization that was now focused on holding ground, territory, the mechanism of governance."
Obama also called Syria ground zero for jihadis around the world, and he said military force was necessary to shrink their capacity, cut off financing and eliminate the flow of foreign fighters.
The White House pushed back against Boehner's comments about the potential need for American ground troops to confront the militants.
Obama's deputy national security adviser, Tony Blinken, said the country would not see a repeat of the Iraq war.
"Hundreds of thousands of Americans on the ground in the Middle East getting bogged down, that's exactly what al-Qaida wants," Blinken said. "That's not what we're going to do."
Al-Qaida affiliates
Meanwhile, the leader of al-Qaida's Syria affiliate vowed Sunday that his group would "use all possible means" to fight back against airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition and warned that the conflict would reach Western countries joining the alliance.
The U.S. views the affiliate, known as the Nusra Front, as a terrorist group, but Syrian rebels have long seen it as a potent ally against both the Islamic State extremist group -- which is the main target of the coalition -- and Assad's forces.
Syrian rebels, activists and analysts have warned that targeting the Nusra Front will inject more chaos into the Syrian conflict and indirectly help Assad by striking one of his main adversaries. The U.S. insists it wants Assad to step down, but is not targeting his forces, which are best placed to benefit from the airstrikes.
In a 25-minute audio recording, Nusra Front leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani portrayed the U.S.-led coalition as a "Crusader alliance" against Sunni Muslims and vowed to fight back.
"We will use all that we have to defend the people of Syria ... from the Crusader alliance," al-Golani said. "And we will use all possible means to achieve this end," he said, without offering more details.
He went on to warn Western countries against taking part in the alliance in words that echoed those of the late founder of al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden.
"This is what will cause the battle to be transported to the hearts of your own homes, because Muslims will not stand idly by and watch Muslims be bombed and killed in their countries, while you are safe on your countries. The price of war will not be paid by your leaders alone. You will pay the biggest price," he said.
The recording appeared genuine and corresponded with Associated Press reporting.
The U.S.-led coalition launched its air campaign against Islamic State fighters in Syria on Tuesday with the aim of ultimately crushing the extremist group, which has created a proto-state spanning the Syria-Iraq border. The U.S. has been carrying out airstrikes against the group in neighboring Iraq since August.
Syrian rebels have expressed anger at the coalition airstrikes, both because they have targeted the Nusra Front -- which they see as an ally -- and because they are not hitting pro-government forces. The Nusra Front's ultimate goal is to impose Islamic law in Syria. But unlike the Islamic State group, it has fought alongside other rebel groups, seeing the overthrow of Assad as its first priority.
Al-Golani warned that the airstrikes would weaken the rebels.
"Those of our men who were targeted in the shelling ... the effect of their loss will be witnessed by the entire conflict, not just on the [Nusra] Front alone," he said.
The Nusra Front leader also warned other rebel groups not to coordinate with the U.S.-led alliance. Washington has promised to arm and train more Syrian rebels to help fight the Islamic State group.
The al-Golani speech came hours after the group's spokesman warned that Muslims would attack countries taking part in the coalition air raids.
Strike hits oil refinery
On Sunday, the northern Syrian town of Tel Abyad was beset by airstrikes, likely by the coalition, targeting a refinery operated by the militant group, said an eyewitness and activists.
"Our building was shaking and we saw fire, some [65 yards] high, coming from the refinery," said Turkish businessman Mehmet Ozer, who lives in the nearby Turkish border town of Akcakale.
The Turkish news agency Dogan said the strikes targeted an oil refinery and the local headquarters of the Islamic State group. U.S. Central Command, which is overseeing the air campaign, did not immediately comment on the strikes.
The U.S.-led coalition has been targeting Islamic State-held oil installations across Syria, aiming to cripple the group's finances. The group is believed to earn some $3 million each day from selling smuggled oil on the black market as well as kidnapping and extortion.
The coalition includes Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan. Several European countries also are contributing to U.S. efforts to strike the Islamic State group in Iraq, including France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium and Britain.
Also, Germany's army has started training 32 Kurdish peshmerga fighters at an army school in Bavaria to support them in their fight in Iraq.
A spokesman for the German defense ministry said Sunday that the 32 Kurdish fighters would stay in Germany until Friday to receive weapons training.
Germany also began delivering arms to the Kurds in northern Iraq on Thursday, dispatching a shipment of 50 hand-held anti-tank weapons, 520 G3 rifles and 20 machine guns.
In total, the German plan calls for arming 10,000 Kurdish fighters with about $90 million worth of equipment.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 19 civilians have been killed so far in coalition strikes in Syria. Most recently, six oil workers in the far northeast province of Hassakeh were killed over the weekend, said the Observatory, which obtains information from a network of activists on the ground.
Overall, about 190,000 people have been killed in Syria's three-year conflict, and nearly one-half of the country's pre-war population of 23 million people has been displaced.
As part of the opening air attack in Syria last week, the U.S. also struck targets purported to be aligned with the Khorasan Group, an al-Qaida affiliate that U.S. officials described as plotting terrorist attacks in the U.S. or Europe.
"I think we've had a very good start," Deputy National Security Adviser Blinken said Sunday on CBS, when asked about the military offensive by the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State.
"We wanted to get an inclusive Iraqi government in place so we'd have a partner to work with in Iraq," Blinken said. "We wanted to get support to train and equip the Syrian opposition. And we had a broad bipartisan vote in support of that in Congress."
Even so, lawmakers on Sunday's television talk shows raised concerns about the operation, including whether U.S. ground troops ultimately will be required and whether Obama should ask Congress to authorize the use of force, particularly in Syria.
The Obama administration has ruled out U.S. ground forces, saying it can rely on Iraqi and Kurdish troops to fight Islamic State militants in Iraq, while training and arming moderate Syrian rebels to do the same in Syria.
"I don't see the political strategy, at least a realistic one, in Syria," said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. "And then that begs the question, how long are we going to be there and is there any end? There's just no appetite in the American public for an open-ended military conflict in Syria," he said on CNN's State of the Union program.
Blinken gave no indication that Obama will seek a new resolution from Congress to authorize the military operation.
"That's something we'd welcome," Blinken said. "We do not require it. We have the existing authorization from 2001. That is a basis for proceeding."
Information for this article was contributed by Kevin Freking, Diaa Hadid, Desmond Butler and Suzan Fraser of The Associated Press and by David Lerman and Phil Mattingly of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 09/29/2014