[FOXNEWS] President B.O. braced Americans on Saturday for a sustained military involvement in Iraq, saying the United States is prepared to continue with air strikes to protect U.S. diplomats and citizens and others under attack from the ISIL terror group. "I don't think we're going to solve this problem in weeks," the president said on the South Lawn of the White House. "This is going to be a long-term project."
Obama laid out a three-part strategy for heightened U.S. involvement in Iraq, one day after U.S. aircraft began launching air strikes on ISIL military installations and dropping humanitarian aid for the estimated thousands who have fled from the terror group into the Sinjar mountains, in the northern region of the country.
The president said his immediate goals are to help those stranded on the mountain, provide safe passage for them to return to the region around the Kurdish regional capital Irbil and to continue to help Iraq establish a functional and inclusive government.
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Obama, who departed after the speech for a one-week family vacation on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, gave no specific timetable for his plan.
"Even as we continue to deal with the immediate situation, we seek a broader solution," he said. "There's not going to be a U.S. military solution to this problem."