Oh, Mr. President. If only you hadn't said that one word everyone in D.C. now has on repeat.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA VIA THE WHITE HOUSE: "I don't want to put the cart before the horse. We don't have a strategy yet."
As we reported earlier, that Thursday comment about the Islamic militant group ISIS started a flurry of headlines that still had major outlets using the "strategy" to fight the group as their top story Monday morning.
REP. MIKE ROGERS, R-MICHIGAN ON FOX NEWS: "The president just did not want to get engaged in any way. That is a decision. That is a policy. That is a strategy."
HEATHER CHILDERS, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: "It's not just Republicans who are criticizing the president's no-strategy strategy."
SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, D-CALIFORNIA ON NBC: "I've learned one thing about this president, and that is he's very cautious. Maybe in this instance too cautious. ... Hopefully those plans will coalesce into a strategy."
Congress predictably unloaded on the president's perhaps poor choice of wording. Obama said he was waiting on the Pentagon's recommendations before announcing a strategy to the press on how to deal with the militants now controlling major swaths of Syria and Iraq.
But for all the uproar over the lack of a long-term strategy, very few seem to have their own. Take Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who played off Obama's comparison of ISIS to a cancer we must deal with, but Kinzinger didn't say how.
REP. ADAM KINZINGER, R-ILLINOIS ON CNN: "If you have cancer in your liver and it's spreading to other parts of your body, you don't just treat the other parts. You treat the liver. The liver's Syria. I think we have to go to the heart of this and do it in a big way."
Sen. John McCain perhaps came the closest. Like some other Republicans, he's pushing for airstrikes on ISIS in Syria, but he stopped short of calling for a military presence on the ground.
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, R-ARIZONA ON CBS: "I think that it requires additional U.S. troops — not ground combat units. But it's going to require more special forces; it's going to require some more forward air controllers."
Democrats, meanwhile, have urged for the U.S. to gather an international coalition to go into Syria and Iraq. Congressman Adam Smith of Washington said, "We can't simply bomb first and ask questions later."
The president has not given a timeline on when he'll unveil any future strategy in Syria and Iraq.
This video includes images from Getty Images / Alex Wong and Getty Images / Chip Somodevilla.
