After President Obama’s speech to the nation on Wednesday night, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow asked NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel what he thought of President Obama’s analogy that the U.S. strategy in fighting terrorism in Yemen and Somalia would carry over to dealing with the Islamic terrorist group ISIS in both Iraq and Syria.

Needless to say, Engel was not at all pleased with the comparison the President made, telling Maddow immediately that “I think it is wildly off base, frankly” and “[i]t's an oversimplification of the problem.

He went on to describe the situation in both Yemen and Somalia with Yemen having:

[A] partnered government that doesn't have the force to reach some parts in the desert where al-Qaeda is hiding out, so it relies on the United States to lend a hand, to do some observation missions over Yemen.

Engel also added that when terrorists are identified in Yemen, Yemeni forces first try to capture them, but if they are unable to carry out a mission, the U.S. steps in with air strikes.

Over in Somalia, Engel told viewers that “you have a similar group to al-Qaeda, the same mentality that's operating in a remote corner of Africa” whom the U.S. engages in only “when the U.S. special operations forces see an opportunity and target them.”

With all that in mind, Engel turned back to criticizing Obama’s speech:

That's not at all the situation we are seeing in Iraq and Syria. Here, we have a large group, tens of thousands of fighters. They control an area the size of Maryland. They control an area that has 8 million people living inside of it. It's much more akin to regime change than it is to waiting back, picking targets with allied forces. They are not comparable at all.

In addition, he blasted the President’s strategy to further train and empower the Iraqi military that had been largely on the ropes after ISIS forces moved in. Engel said that:

The problem is the Iraqi army, over the last several months, has collapsed. It has been reconstituted already by many Iranian advisers and sometimes regular Iranian ground forces that have been witnessed on many occasions and these Sunni villages that are now with ISIS are afraid of the Iraqi army. They don't want the Iraqi army to come into their villages.

Engel ended his scathing reaction to the President’s prime-time address by suggesting that the actions of the Iraqi military “that we are going to link up with to rid Iraq of ISIS” has provided “a reason that people support ISIS in this country.”

(h/t: Mediaite)

The complete portion of the transcript from the special program MSNBC Presidential Speech that included NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel on September 10 can be found below.