Obama acknowledges setback in Iraq, but says "war is not lost"

Leandra Felipe - Correspondent for Agência Brasil/EBC

President Barack Obama stated that the capture of the Iraqi city of Ramadi by the Islamic State was a "tactical setback," but that "the war against the extremist group is not lost." The Islamic State advanced on Ramadi and announced that it had also conquered the historic Syrian city of Palmyra.

“I don’t think we’re losing,” the president said yesterday (21) in an interview with The Atlantic magazine, which was widely reported by other media outlets in the United States.

He acknowledged that there had been a setback for the military forces fighting against the Islamic State in the region, but noted that the city of Ramadi was a vulnerable point in the region. Since August 2014, the US-led coalition has managed to strike more than 6 targets belonging to the extremist group in Iraq and Syria.

The US president did not send troops to Iraq, but Ramadi's fall led some opposition sectors, especially Republicans, and the press to question the strategy adopted by Obama.

In the interview, he stated that Iraqi security forces need more training. "The training of security forces in Iraq, the military buildings, and the command and control system are not progressing quickly enough in the region," Obama added.

The American military presence in previous instances has been heavily criticized, but Obama's statements and the renewed debate about the president's decision not to send troops come on the same day that the United States Armed Forces acknowledged, for the first time, the existence of civilian casualties from the bombings they carried out in Iraq and Syria.

In a statement released Thursday, U.S. General James Terry acknowledged that an attack launched in Harim, Syria, in November 2014, ended up hitting and killing two Syrian children. "We regret these deaths, even though they were unintentional," the statement said.