Obama: US forming coalition to 'snuff out' ISIL

Obama made the remarks at a Democratic fund-raising event in Baltimore in the state of Maryland on Friday, after authorizing US airstrikes against ISIL terrorists in Syria. The US has already conducted 154 airstrikes against ISIL targets in neighboring Iraq.
 
He stated that the ISIL threat has focused the world's attention on the need to "ultimately snuff out this particular brand of Islamic [sic] extremism that really has no place in the 21st century."
 
The US is trying to establish an international coalition to confront the extremist group, whose savage actions in Iraq and Syria have shocked the world. 
 
Last week, ministers from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark met at a NATO summit in Wales to hammer out a strategy for battling ISIL.
 
Obama also attended the NATO summit and later this month will hold a leaders security conference at the UN General Assembly in New York, aimed at seeking support from countries willing to join the coalition.
 
"We're going to be able to build the kind of coalition that allows us to lead, but also isn't entirely dependent on what we do," said Obama.
 
The ISIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, control large parts of Syria's northern territory. ISIL sent its fighters into Iraq in June, quickly seizing large swaths of land straddling the border between the two countries.
 
According to the White House, the terrorist group recently beheaded American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff in Syria. Foley was reportedly killed last month, and Sotloff was executed early this month.
 
Former US intelligence official Scott Rickard says Washington is using the “beheadings” of the “journalists” by ISIL to "sway public opinion" in favor of another war in the Middle East.