Obama Calls for Excising 'Cancer' from Middle East as Officials Reveal Failed Raid to Free Hostages
U.S. Special Operations forces previously mounted an
unsuccessful mission inside Syria to rescue American journalist James
Foley. The operation sought to rescue several Americans held by Islamic
State extremists.
U.S. Special Operations forces
mounted an unsuccessful mission inside Syria earlier this summer to try
to rescue several Americans held by Islamic extremists, including the journalist who was beheaded this week, senior Obama administration officials said.
President
Barack Obama
ordered the secret operation, the first of its kind by the U.S.
inside Syrian territory since the start of the civil war, after the U.S.
received intelligence the Americans were being held by the extremist
group known as Islamic State at a specific facility in a sparsely
populated area inside Syria. Among the group, intelligence agencies
believed at the time, was
James Foley,
the U.S. journalist whose beheading was shown in a grisly video released Tuesday.
The
officials declined to say precisely where and when the operation took
place. But its disclosure was just the latest of several signs of a
toughening American posture toward the extremist forces of Islamic
State, a group that Mr. Obama Wednesday labeled a "cancer" on the Middle
East.
Special Operations forces mounted an unsuccessful
operation inside Syria this summer to try to rescue several Americans
held by extremists, including James Foley, the journalist who was
beheaded this week. Matt Bradley joins the News Hub from Baghdad. Photo:
AP
Officials said that several dozen
Special Operations forces took part in the helicopter-borne operation as
drones and fighter aircraft circled overhead. After landing nearby and
approaching the facility by foot, the force came under small-arms fire,
to which it responded, the officials said. Several fighters of the
Islamic State were killed in the exchange of fire. One member of the
special operations forces team was shot and slightly injured, the
officials said.
But the U.S. forces
didn't find any of the Americans in the facility and pulled out of the
area. "When the opportunity presented itself, the president authorized
the Department of Defense to move aggressively to recover our citizens,"
Lisa Monaco, assistant to the president for homeland security and
counterterrorism, said in a statement. "Unfortunately, that mission was
ultimately not successful because the hostages were not present."
The U.S. rescue mission wasn't coordinated with the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a senior U.S. official said.
As
the details of the attempted rescue suggest, Mr. Foley wasn't the only
Westerner being held by Islamic State operatives. Approximately 20
journalists are believed to be missing in Syria, with many held by the
Islamic State, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Philip
Balboni, the president and chief executive of GlobalPost, an online
news site Mr. Foley worked for, said Mr. Foley's captors originally
demanded a ransom sum from both the family and GlobalPost of €100
million ($132.5 million). He declined to discuss their reply to the
demand. He said all communication was shared with appropriate government
authorities.
The disclosure of the
dramatic rescue operation came on a day of stern public responses from
the Obama administration to the videotaped beheading of Mr. Foley, which
Islamic State said was its first answer to recent American bombing runs
in Iraq to drive the extremist group's forces away from a key dam in
Mosul.
In a somber public statement,
President Obama denounced the beheading of Mr. Foley as the work of
"nihilistic" Islamic extremists and called Wednesday for a broadened
international campaign to eradicate the group from the Middle East.
He
also vowed to continue the U.S. air war against them in Iraq, despite
threats by the group, commonly known by the acronyms ISIL and ISIS, to
behead more Americans if the strikes continue.
The U.S. would be relentless, he said, in pursuing those who killed Mr. Foley.
"One
thing we can all agree on is a group like ISIL has no place in the 21st
century," Mr. Obama said from his vacation in Martha's Vineyard. "From
governments and people across the Middle East, there has to be a common
effort to extract this cancer so that it does not spread. There has to
be a clear rejection of these kind of nihilistic ideologies."
Propaganda videos by the militant group the Islamic
State show people claiming to be Australian, British and even American.
And now, the execution of James Foley by a man with a British accent has
further heightened fears about the potential for terrorist activity by
radicalized Western Muslims returning home.
The president urged allies and
partners to join forces to defeat Islamic State fighters who have
established a quasi-state that controls large swaths of Iraq and Syria.
Mr.
Obama's comments followed release of the video showing an Islamic State
militant killing Mr. Foley, who was captured in Syria nearly two years
ago, and threatening to kill another U.S. reporter in the group's hands.
Mr.
Obama's language was much sharper than comments he made in an interview
in January, when he compared the group to a high-school basketball team
that had neither the talent nor the wherewithal to pose a major global
threat.
While Mr. Foley's killing isn't
expected to lead to an immediate shift in U.S. policy in the Middle
East, it creates new pressure on Mr. Obama to authorize a wider military
campaign to directly confront the Islamic State.
Administration officials said the U.S. wouldn't be deterred by the group's threats.
"Make
no mistake: We will continue to confront ISIL wherever it tries to
spread its despicable hatred," Secretary of State John Kerry said in a
statement. "The world must know that the United States of America will
never back down in the face of such evil. ISIL and the wickedness it
represents must be destroyed, and those responsible for this heinous,
vicious atrocity will be held accountable."
Soon
after Mr. Obama spoke, the U.S. military announced a new series of
airstrikes that hit Islamic State forces near Mosul Dam, Iraq's largest.
On Monday, with critical help from American airstrikes, Kurdish and
other Iraqi forces routed Islamic State fighters holding the dam.
On
Wednesday, U.S. jet fighters and armed drones carried out 14 airstrikes
that destroyed Islamic State armored vehicles, hidden bombs and other
targets, the military said.
For now, the
U.S. is hewing to a narrow set of objectives in Iraq: to protect
American military and diplomatic personnel working in the country, and
to offer selective help for vulnerable Iraqi communities.
Those
elastic goals give the U.S. military considerable leeway to carry out
airstrikes across the country. Military officials say the strikes so far
have succeeded in blunting the group's attacks, demoralized the
fighters and led some to leave the group. But they have done little to
damage the group's overall danger to the region, military officials
said.
American journalist James Foley wears a helmet and body
armor in a photo taken while he was covering the war in Aleppo, Syria,
in November 2012.
Associated Press
That is leading to growing
pressure—within the military and in Congress—for the president to
authorize a broader fight against the Islamic State.
For
weeks, the U.S. military's Central Command, which oversees Middle East
operations, has advocated a more expansive, near-term air campaign
targeting Islamic State commanders, equipment and military positions
that U.S. intelligence has pinpointed in Iraq, defense officials said.
"Hunt
while the hunting's good," one senior defense official said of Central
Command's message to White House and Pentagon policy makers.
Other
officials want to limit the strikes until a new Iraqi government is
formed in the coming weeks. For now, that view appears to be winning the
debate.
Advocates of a more immediately
aggressive U.S. approach say targets of opportunity today may no longer
be reachable by the time a new government in Baghdad is formed.
The
U.S. currently has about 900 military personnel working in Iraq. They
are providing security for the U.S. Embassy, helping the Iraqi and
Kurdish forces plan their military operations against the Islamic State,
and looking at other ways America can help Iraq combat the militant
threats.
U.S. officials said on
Wednesday that the State Department asked the Pentagon to dispatch 300
more military personnel to the Baghdad area to protect Americans working
there, defense officials said.
Mr.
Obama's current airstrike strategy is also geographically limited. The
U.S. has no intentions of launching airstrikes in Syria, where the
Islamic State controls large parts of the country and has established a
de facto capital, U.S. officials say. For now, Syria provides a safe
haven for Islamic State forces who are able to return from fighting in
Iraq without fear of being hit by U.S. airstrikes. U.S. intelligence has
detected some fighters flowing back into Syria after the recent U.S.
air attacks.
The president has
authorized a new $500 million program to arm and train pro-American
Syrian forces that could confront the Islamic State, but that proposal
has yet to be approved by Congress, and it isn't clear if or when
lawmakers will back the proposal.
A ribbon is seen on the front door of the family home of journalist James Foley Wednesday.
Associated Press
For part of his time in captivity,
Mr. Foley was held along with at least two French journalists who were
freed in April. One of them, Nicolas Hénin, told Europe 1 radio on
Wednesday that Mr. Foley was singled out for particularly brutal
treatment because he was American.
As
the Obama administration considers how to respond to the brutal murder
of an American, the president must balance deep public reluctance to
plunge back into Iraq against new calls to launch a broader offensive
against extremists.
Rep. Adam Schiff
(D., Calif.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said
Democrats support the president, but are concerned about backing
military action with poorly defined objectives.
"It's
going to require vigorous oversight by the Congress to make sure that
the administration, despite its best efforts, doesn't get sucked into a
level of commitment that the country isn't willing to support," he said.
Mr.
Schiff said the military targeting in Iraq is "rapidly getting beyond
the narrowly defined mission of protecting Americans and preventing
genocide of the Yazidis," an ethnic group that came under attack this
month.
Like Mr. Schiff, Sen. Angus King
(I., Maine), said the president should consider asking Congress for
specific authorization under the War Powers Act if he plans to expand
military attacks in Iraq. Mr. King said the U.S. has to avoid being
dragged into a costly confrontation in the Middle East.
"We have to be careful," he said. "We can't let it intimidate us and we can't let it provoke us."
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