Obama: We can stop 'large scale' terror attacks

President Obama says it may be impossible to prevent individual terrorist attacks, but large scale assaults can and must be stopped.

"The truth is that in a free and open society, we will never completely eliminate the possibility of a single terrorist act happening in any given time," Obama told a French television network in an interview this week.

"But," he added, "what we can do is that we prevent the kinds of large scale attacks that result in so much deaths."

Speaking just weeks after the multi-targeted attacks in Paris, Obama promoted his plan to roll back the perpetrators of that act -- the Islamic State -- from their territory in Iraq and Syria, a strategy that includes military and diplomatic pressure.

"If we combine those efforts over the course of the next several months, we will not have eliminated the crisis," he said. "But we will be continually strangling the space in which they can operate. And contain them, and ultimately destroy them."

Obama spoke with French television as he visited Paris for a summit on climate change.