President Obama does not believe ISIS is getting stronger.

Obama rejected criticism that the Islamic State was gaining strength in Iraq and Syria even as he admitted that the campaign against the group faced significant constraints. “From the start, our goal has been first to contain and we have contained”.

The United States should consider all measures including a no-fly zone in the fight against Islamic State, Gen. John Allen, the outgoing special U.S. envoy for the coalition against the militant group in Iraq and Syria, told CNN on Thursday. Obama’s full interview with Stephanopoulos will air Sunday on “This Week”. Fifty-three percent of those surveyed said they oppose the idea, down one percent from a poll taken in September, 2014. Republican candidate Donald Trump, who is leading in Republican polls alongside Carson, has also said ISIS could be defeated by bombing oil fields. Obama was responding to a claim Carson made at the GOP debate on Tuesday evening about the best way to destroy ISIS. “The Seals and the Marines that can conduct those missions, as well, and did so very skillfully in Afghanistan, there’s just never enough of them – and I know because I tried to find every single one in the inventory, and tried to get them into Iraq, Afghanistan or the greater Central Command area”. “I would distinguish between making sure that the place is ideal – that’s not going to happen any time soon – with making sure that ISIL continues to shrink in its scope of operations until it no longer poses the threat that it does”. Still, only 40 percent of Americans were in favor of sending ground troops back then, and that number hasn’t changed significantly since. This might mean something more if the USA and its coalition was actually pushing ISIS off of territory it now controls. Take all of that land from them. “It’s very, very important to note that our capabilities now are just so vastly greater than when we did the fight to Baghdad”. Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani announced the “liberation” of Sinjar from the Islamic State group Friday in an assault backed by US-led strikes that cut a key jihadist supply line with Syria. It’s a problem that we could have avoided had we remained in Iraq, and had we led this fight on the ground.