Obama belittles Ben Carson for assertion that ISIS could be destroyed in Iraq 'fairly easily' if the U.S. targeted the terror group's oil fields: 'He doesn't know much about it'
President Barack Obama laughed off in an interview Ben Carson's suggestion at the most recent presidential debate that ISIS could be defeated 'fairly easily' if the U.S. targeted and destroyed the oil fields it controls.
'What I think is that he doesn't know much about it,' Obama told ABC's George Stephanopoulos during a clip of their sit down that aired on Good Morning America.
Obama noted that as the nation's Commander-in-Chief he has access 'to all the best military minds in the country and all the best foreign policy minds in the country.'
'And I'm not running for office. And so my only interest is in success,' he said.
'Outside of Anbar in Iraq, there's a big energy field. Take that from them. Take all of that land from them. We could do that, I believe, fairly easily, I've learned from talking to several generals, and then you move on from there,' Carson said at Tuesday evening's debate
Obama was responding to a claim Carson made at the GOP debate on Tuesday evening about the best way to destroy ISIS.
Both leading Republican presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Carson, contended that the United States ought to strike ISIS-controlled oil fields in Iraq to cut off the head of the enemy.
'We have to be saying, how do we make them look like losers? Because that's the way that they're able to gather a lot of influence,' Carson said during the foreign policy section of the two-hour event.
Continuing, he said, 'I think in order to make them look like losers, we have to destroy their caliphate. And you look for the easiest place to do that? It would be in Iraq.'
'Outside of Anbar in Iraq, there's a big energy field. Take that from them. Take all of that land from them. We could do that, I believe, fairly easily, I've learned from talking to several generals, and then you move on from there,' he said.
In conclusion, 'You have to continue to face them, because our goal is not to contain them, but to destroy them before they destroy us,' Carson stated.
President Obama contended in the interview with Stephanopoulos that containment is only the first step in the process. He said the U.S. wants to 'completely decapitate' ISIS' operation - but the coalition isn't there yet.
'I don't think they're gaining strength,' Obama said of the terrorist group. 'From the start our goal has been first to contain, and we have contained them. They have not gained ground in Iraq.'
In Syria, he said, 'they'll come in, they'll leave. But you don't see this systematic march by ISIL across the terrain.'
'What we have not yet been able to do is to completely decapitate their command and control structures. We've made some progress in trying to reduce the flow of foreign fighters,' he said of the group, which the U.S. government refers to by its alternative name, ISIL.
The U.S. is now looking to recruit more Sunni fighters in Iraq 'to really go on offense rather than simply engage in defense,' he said.
Syria is another story entirely, the president stated, because of the political problems caused by President Bashar al-Assad.
'Until Assad is no longer a lightning rod for Sunnis in Syria and that entire region is no longer a proxy war for Shia-Sunni conflict, we're going to continue to have problems,' Obama said in the interview, conducted yesterday from the White House.
Expounding, he said, 'I would distinguish between making sure that the place is perfect -- that's not going to happen anytime soon - with making sure that ISIL continues to shrink in its scope of operations until it no longer poses the kind of threat that it does.'
In another section that aired on ABC early, Obama elbowed Trump over his proposal to deport the roughly 11 million illegal immigrants currently residing in the country.
'I have no idea where Mr. Trump thinks the money's gonna come from,' the president said. 'It would cost us hundreds of billions of dollars to execute that.'
And he said, optically speaking, it would not behoove the United States to round up and ship millions of people out of the country.
'Imagine the images on the screen flashed around the world as we were dragging parents away from their children, and putting them in what, detention centers, and then systematically sending them out,' Obama said. 'Nobody thinks that that is realistic. But more importantly, that's not who we are as Americans.'
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