Obama downplays prospect of strikes in Syria





5:51 PM, August 28, 2014 |


WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama played down the prospect of imminent U.S. military action in Syria on Thursday, saying, “We don’t have a strategy yet” for degrading the violent militant group seeking to establish a caliphate in the Middle East.


Obama said confronting the Islamic State militants requires a strategy with support from other countries in the region. He said it’s time for states there to “stop being ambivalent” about the goals of extremist groups such as the Islamic State.


“They have no ideology beyond violence and chaos and the slaughter of innocent people,” Obama said, alluding to the group’s announcement last week that it had killed U.S. journalist James Foley. The militants also have threatened to kill other U.S. hostages.


The U.S. is striking Islamic State targets in Iraq, and officials have said the president is considering similar action in neighboring Syria in the wake of Foley’s death. However, the president said Thursday that his top priority remains rolling back the militants’ gains in Iraq, where he has said they pose a threat to U.S. personnel in Erbil and Baghdad.
Obama said that if he were to expand that military mission, he would consult with members of Congress, who are due to return to Washington in early September.
Other developments

Syrian troops killed: The Islamic State killed more than 160 Syrian government troops seized in recent fighting and posted pictures of terrified young conscripts stripped to their underwear before meeting their deaths in the Syrian countryside. The images of the slayings that emerged Thursday were the latest in a massacre attributed to the extremist group, which has terrorized rivals and civilians with brutality in Syria and Iraq as it seeks to expand on both sides of the border.
Peacekeepers detained: Gunmen in southern Syria detained 43 United Nations peacekeepers during fighting on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, the United Nations said. It said 81 more peacekeepers were trapped in the area by clashes between rebels and Syrian troops.