Hagel today:

U.S. military involvement in Iraq will continue because the long-term threat from ISIS is more dangerous, even than that from al-Qaeda, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday.

In a briefing at the Pentagon a day after the U.S. revealed that it launched a failed mission in Syria this summer to rescue U.S. hostages being held by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sharm, Hagel said the U.S. is “very clear-eyed about the challenges ahead,” stressing: “The U.S. military’s involvement is not over.”

Asked to compare ISIS to al-Qaeda, Hagel said it was “beyond anything that we’ve seen,” calling the group more than “just a terrorist group.” “They marry an ideology with a sophistication of strategy and military prowess” that represent “a whole new dynamic and a new paradigm of threats to this country,” he said.

Obama in January calling ISIS a JV team.

In a wide-ranging interview with the New Yorker, President Barack Obama compared Al-Qaeda-linked militants in Iraq and Syria to junior varsity basketball players, downplaying their threat as small-league. He also shared what he thought were the chances of reaching Middle East peace agreements.

New Yorker editor David Remnick pointed out to the president that the Al Qaeda flag is now seen flying in Falluja in Iraq and in certain locations in Syria, and thus the terrorist group has not been “decimated” as Obama had said during his 2012 reelection campaign.

“The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Obama told Remnick. “I think there is a distinction between the capacity and reach of a bin Laden and a network that is actively planning major terrorist plots against the homeland versus jihadists