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"U.S. President Barack Obama announced on Saturday that initial U.S. airstrikes in Iraq had \"successfully destroyed\" arms and equipment belonging to Islamic State militants (formerly known as ISIS/ISIL), but added that the situation in Iraq would take a long time to repair. \n\"I don't think we are going to solve this problem in weeks,\" Obama said during a press conference from the White House on Saturday morning. \"This is going to be a long-term project.\" \n\nObama: Iraq airstrikes destroyed some militant arms, but \"I don't think we're going to solve this problem in weeks.\" pic.twitter.com/w5m6wFUGp7\n\u2014 Mashable (@mashable) August 9, 2014\n\nSee also: How Obama Helped Extremism Grow in Iraq\nThe U.S. military carried out multiple targeted air strikes on Friday to protect Erbil, a city in northern Iraq where some Americans are located, as well as thousands of members of an ethnic group called the Yazidis, who are hiding on a mountain with minimal resources. Obama confirmed that the U.S. has conducted two successful air drops of food and water for these Iraqis in need.\n\"We feel confident that we can prevent ISIL from going up a mountain, and slaughtering the people there,\" Obama said in his remarks. \nThe president repeated his assurance that \"we're not going to have U.S. combat troops in Iraq again,\" but declined to provide a firm timetable for the current military campaign in Iraq. Instead, Obama stressed the need for a political \u2014 rather than a military \u2014 solution in Iraq.\n\nObama, live now: \"I've been very clear that we're not going to have U.S. combat troops in Iraq again.\" http://t.co/sj48OuR1a1\n\u2014 Mashable (@mashable) August 9, 2014\n\n\"It would be a big mistake for us to think that we can, on the cheap, simply go in, tamp everything down again and restart without some fundamental shift in attitudes among the various Iraqi factions,\" he said.\n\nObama: Wasn't my decision to pull troops from Iraq; \"a majority of Iraqis did not want our troops there.\" Analysis: http://t.co/G0EtQKzGKq\n\u2014 Mashable (@mashable) August 9, 2014\n\nObama first announced that he had authorized U.S. airstrikes in Iraq in an address on Thursday night, in response to the militants' growing threat. In his remarks Saturday, the president admitted their advances in Iraq had been \"more rapid\" than intelligence officials and policymakers had expected. \nHave something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.\n      window._msla=window.loadScriptAsync||function(src,id){if(document.getElementById(id))return;var js=document.createElement('script');js.id=id;js.src=src;document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0].parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);};\n_msla(\"//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\",\"twitter_jssdk\");"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/08/09/obama-iraq-briefing/>