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<\/a>“I just want the American people to understand the nature of the threat and how we’re going to deal with it and to have confidence that we’ll be able to deal with it,” Obama said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” that aired on Sunday. The interview was conducted in Washington on Saturday.<\/p>\n
“The next phase is now to start going on some offense,” he said.<\/p>\n
The Wednesday speech will come a day ahead of the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when al Qaeda militants flew hijacked planes into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon, killing almost 3,000 people.<\/p>\n
“I want everybody to understand that we have not seen any immediate intelligence about threats to the homeland” from the Islamic State group, Obama said.<\/p>\n
But the group has attracted foreign fighters from Western nations who could travel to the United States “unimpeded,” Obama said. “Over time, that can be a serious threat to the homeland,” he said.<\/p>\n In an interview earlier this year, Obama had put the group in a category of foreign militant movements that were a minor threat, comparing it to a “JV”, or junior varsity, team. But he told NBC the group had grown. “They’re not a JV team,” he said.<\/p>\n OBAMA’S STRATEGY<\/strong><\/p>\n He ruled out sending U.S. ground troops to fight in Iraq or\u00a0Syria, saying “this is not the equivalent of the Iraq war,” and described the coalition he spent time building last week at a NATO meeting in Wales.<\/p>\n This is going to be “similar to the kinds of counter terrorism campaigns that we’ve been engaging in consistently over the last five, six, seven years,” Obama said.<\/p>\n “We are going to be a part of an international coalition, carrying out air strikes in support of work on the ground by Iraqi troops, Kurdish troops,” Obama said. Nine other countries have agreed to be “core” members of the coalition.<\/p>\n Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel are engaged in a mission in the region to flesh out the plan. “We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities.\u00a0We’re going to shrink the territory that they control.\u00a0And ultimately we’re going to defeat ’em,” Obama said.<\/p>\n<\/a>