territory in syria and iraq, when i became president, i said i want to see what they have. i looked and it was a mess. it was a lot. when i took office, one of my very first acts was to go to the pentagon and ask them to produce and show me a plan to defeat isis. under the new approach we developed, we empowered our commanders in the field, enabled our partners on the ground and directly confronted isis' wicked ideology. we're doing that today except in even greater numbers. as a result, as i noted in my state of the union address yesterday, the united states military, our coalition partners and the syrian democratic forces