The best group around to be able to do this for boots on the ground are the Kurds. They have been incredibly successful.

Every single person I spoke to over the course of my trip expressed strong support for our mission and a willingness to help in some way.

We must continue to repudiate the gross distortion of Islam that ISIL is spreading.

This photograph I pointed out of a, you know, of a Kurd President, of a, you know, Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister of a Shia-Iraqi Foreign Minister, all together conferring about how they are going to deal with ISIL tells you the story of…

We will not have combat ground troops as part of this campaign.

Not going to happen.

I am for going after ISIL because there is such a difference.

In Syria, the on-the-ground combat will be done by the moderate opposition--which serves as the best counterweight in Syria to extremists like ISIL.

ISIL must be defeated. Period. End of story.

We know that ISIL, as it gets weaker, the moderate opposition will get stronger.

I want to be clear. The United States troops that have been deployed to Iraq, do not and will not, have a combat mission.

From the last decade, we know that a sustainable strategy is not U.S. ground forces.

The United States will not go it alone. That has been a fundamental principle on which President Obama has sought to organize this effort.

There is no negotiation with ISIL. There is nothing to negotiate.

I hope that when that is done, it is done with the administration explicitly seeking that.

There would be no capacity for success here if we had not been able to see the Iraqi Government come together.

We have been focused on ISIL since its inception as the successor to Al Qaeda of Iraq in 2013.

The invasion was ISIL into Iraq. The invasion is foreign fighters into Syria.