Obama Admits to Underestimating Islamic State

US-led coalition forces carried out more airstrikes on Islamic State positions in northern and eastern Syria on Monday.

The counter-terrorism campaign is also intensifying on the ground, with Kurdish and Iraqi fighters taking fighting Islamic State jihadists who threaten the stability of the entire region.

Meanwhile, President Barack Obama admitted his administration underestimated ISIS.

On Sunday, CBS News "60 Minutes" Correspondent Steve Kroft asked the president why his administration was caught off guard.

"Well, I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria," the president replied.

"I mean, he didn't just say that, 'We underestimated ISIL.' He said, 'We overestimated the ability and the will of our allies, the Iraqi Army, to fight,'" Kroft pressed.

"That's true. That's absolutely true," Obama said.

Speaking before the U.N. last week, the president described ISIS as a "cancer."

"There can be no reasoning, no negotiation, with this brand of evil," Obama said. "The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force."

But House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, says the president's strategy for defeating them won't work.

"If the goal is to destroy ISIS as the president says it is, I don't believe the strategy that he outlined will accomplish that," he said.

 "At the end of the day I think it's going to take more than airstrikes to drive them out of there," the Ohio lawmaker continued. "At some point somebody's boots have to be on the ground. That's the whole point."

Meanwhile, National Review is accusing the Obama administration of making up a terrorist entity it calls the Khorosan group. The magazine reports the Khorasan group is simply al Qaeda, but the president doesn't want to say the U.S. is still fighting them. 

Part of the administration's strategy is to back the free Syrian army, and it's a risk

"Well, the Free Syrian Army clearly, we are putting our money on them to be able to deal with ISIS. It is a short-term gain for the Assad regime, the fact that we are using a Free Syrian Army and we're attacking ISIS," Obama said.

Boehner warns that the president's strategy better work.

"We have no choice," he said. "These are barbarians. They intend to kill us, and if we don't destroy them first, we're going to pay the price."