[More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.]
On 16 November 2015, CNN's Christiane Amanpour and two of her network's analysts blasted President Obama moments after he ended a press conference where he defended his anti-ISIS strategy. Amanpour underlined that Obama "something that was pretty incredible...that our strategy is working. People do not believe that to be the case. The only strategy that's working is the strategy that he tends to dismiss — and that's the ground troop strategy. Sinjar, Tikrit, Kobani — those are the only ISIS strongholds that have been taken back by a combination of American intelligence and air power, and local ground forces."
The journalist later asserted that "the question is to have an honest conversation now about a new strategy to destroy." CNN terrorism analyst Paul Cruickshank added that "clearly, the strategy is not working, because of the terrible terrorism we've seen," and bluntly stated that "the idea that you can really contain a terrorist group doesn't really make sense." Political analyst Gloria Borger contended that the President's "problem is that he has to be able to tell Americans, who may be worried — and tell the world why his strategy is going to work, when they've seen that it isn't working, given what occurred in Paris."