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Obama Enlists 9 Allies to Help in the Battle Against ISIS
(New York Times) Helene Cooper - President Obama recruited at least nine allies on Friday to help crush the marauding Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Diplomats and defense officials from the U.S., Britain, France, Australia, Canada, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark huddled to devise a two-pronged strategy: strengthening allies on the ground in Iraq and Syria, while bombing Sunni militants from the air. "There is no containment policy for ISIL [ISIS]," Secretary of State John Kerry said. "They're an ambitious, avowed, genocidal, territorial-grabbing, caliphate-desiring quasi-state with an irregular army, and leaving them in some capacity intact anywhere would leave a cancer in place that will ultimately come back to haunt us." Enlisting support from Sunni populations in Syria and Iraq is crucial, experts said, because airstrikes alone will not suffice.