Kerry: U.S. not at war with ISIS

[Valin]

CNN:

Elise Labott, Laura Smith-Spark and Ray Sanchez

September 11, 2014

 

(CNN) -- U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday would not say the United States is at war with ISIS, telling CNN in an interview that the administration's strategy includes "many different things that one doesn't think of normally in context of war."

 

"What we are doing is engaging in a very significant counterterrorism operation," Kerry told CNN's Elise Labott in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. "It's going to go on for some period of time. If somebody wants to think about it as being a war with ISIL, they can do so, but the fact is it's a major counterterrorism operation that will have many different moving parts."

 

Kerry made a distinction between ISIS and terror groups operating in Somalia and Yemen.

 

(Snip)