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WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama on Saturday said he will make an address Wednesday about his plan to fight Islamic State militants in Iraq, saying he doesn't intend to deploy U.S. ground troops the country. In an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, the president said IS fighters are a "serious threat" but that the United States has "the capacity to deal with it.
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He said he doesn't intend to send U.S. ground troops to the region, stressing this fight isn't like the Iraqi War.
"Over the course of months, we are going to be able to not just blunt the momentum of (IS)," he said. "We are going to systematically degrade their capabilities. We're going to shrink the territory that they control. And that's how we're going to defeat them.
"This is not the equivalent of the Iraq war," he added.
And though there is no "immediate intelligence" suggesting the Sunni militants are a threat to the United States, Obama said that should the terror group grow, it could attempt attacks on U.S. soil.
"The strategy both for Iraq and for Syria is that we will hunt down [IS] members and assets wherever they are. I will reserve the right to always protect the American people and go after folks who are trying to hurt us wherever they are," Obama said.
"Our goal should not be to think that we can occupy every country where there's a terrorist organization," he added. "Our goal has to be to partner more effectively with governments that are committed to pushing back against the kind of extremism that [IS] represents."
