Obama seeks review of Syria strategy, sees Assad removal as necessary
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama wants his advisers to review the administration's Syria policy after determining it may not be possible to defeat Islamic State militants without removing Syrian President Bashar Assad, CNN reported on Wednesday.
Citing senior US officials, the network said Obama's national security team held four meetings in the past week that were driven by how the administration's Syria strategy fit into its campaign against Islamic State, which has seized large parts of Syria and Iraq.
"The president has asked us to look again at how this fits together," CNN quoted one senior official as saying. "The long-running Syria problem is now compounded by the reality that to genuinely defeat ISIL, we need not only a defeat in Iraq but a defeat in Syria." ISIL is another acronym for Islamic State.
