What Obama did say last night

Not much.  He spoke for only 15 minutes, which is not much.  He came on TV right at 9 PM as promised.  Thinking this ought to be an important speech I took written notes.  He did give a partial goal, to "degrade and destroy" ISIS, which is something of a question beggar.  If you destroy them you don't have to degrade them.  He did not say what we want to do with the land that ISIS has conquered already.  He mentioned the US pullout of 140K troops from Iraq as if that was a good thing.  "The US is safer, BUT we still face a threat."  That's luke warm, on one hand things are safer, on the other hand the barbarians are at the gates.  What's a citizen to think about that?  Do we kick back and relax or do we go out and buy firearms?
   "ISIL is not Islamic and not a state".  That's a stretch.  They worship Allah and they control more territory than the Bahgdad government or the Assad regime in Syria.  He did call them terrorists, which is new for Obama. 
   Obama worried about ISIS fighters with US or European passports, who could fly into New York without visas.  Doesn't worry me much, I'm sure pass ports can be bought somewhere if they need them.  Plus with 3000 miles of seacoast and 5000 miles of land border, you don't need paperwork to get into the US.  You just walk in, or come by boat.  Little kids from Honduras can do it, so can anyone else. 
   Obama said we had flown 150 airstrikes against ISIS so far.  Actually that's not too shabby, considering we have been at it for 30 days or less.  That's about four airstrikes a day.  Back in the Viet Nam war, my wing only managed two strikes a day, flying off a nice big air base with 10,000 foot runways, road and rail supply from Bangkok, daily Log Air flights and 90 fighter-bombers.  It's harder when flying off an aircraft carrier. 
  Of course you want to do some checking.  If, Obama said "air strike" when he actually meant "sortie" then we got trouble.  150 sorties isn't much.  We used to fly 70 sorties a day out of Korat, going up to bomb "Route Pack 6" (Hanoi). 
  I did hear Obama say we would fly air strikes into Syria.  I also heard him say another 475 troops were going to Iraq.  That brings the troop total up to 1500 US troops in country.  I also heard him say "no boots on the ground"  which makes ISIS feel nice and secure. 
  Obama asked for Congressional support, type and kind unspecified.  He did not ask for a declaration of war (we don't do those any more) or an Authorization for the Use of Military Force, or even a supplemental defense appropriation bill.  If he doesn't ask for something, he won't get it. 
  Then Obama gave a lengthy riff about American exceptionalism, the first I've ever heard him do.  He spoke of some great things from American history, and called them good.