Islamic State: Is it ISIS, ISIL, or Now, Daesh?

Adding to the confusion in Washington and across the country about what the call the Islamic State's terrorist fighters, the Pentagon has started using a new name for the Islamic jihadi group: Daesh.

"'Daesh' is a term that our partners in the Gulf use and in fact it speaks to a name that's very close to ISIL in Arabic," explained Army Lt. Gen. James Terry, the commander of the Combined Joint Task Force to a group of reporters at a Pentagon press briefing, reports CNN.  "It also speaks to another name that means 'to crush underneath your foot.'"

But few other people in Washington have picked up on Daesh, although Terry said coalition forces and others fighting against the terrorist group prefer to use that term.

President Barack Obama and other government leaders have been calling the terror group that is fighting in Iraq and Syria ISIL, which is short for Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

NBC's "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd said earlier this year that he believes that Obama prefers to call the Islamic State terror group ISIL nstead of ISIS because he doesn't want to deal with Syria.

Many news organizations, including Newsmax, call the group ISIS, which stands for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Daesh, meanwhile, is the transliteration of the acronym for the Arabic phrase "al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham."

Terry said the coalition forces and military leaders prefer to use Daesh because the partners in the fight feel that ISIS and ISIL legitimizes the terrorist fighters as "states."

"Our partners — at least the ones that I work with — ask us to use that because they feel that if you use 'ISIL' you will legitimize a self-declared caliphate, and it actually, they feel pretty strongly that we should not be doing that," Terry said.

Some other high ranking officials have started using the acronym to describe the Islamic State, including Secretary of State John Kerry, who used it in testimony in a Capitol Hill hearing last week.

However, others, including Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel still call the group "ISIL."

But in any case and by any name, Terry promised the fight will continue against the insurgents.

"Daesh is why we are here," said Terry. "Daesh uses terror and fear to dominate people and reward themselves. It has demonstrated time and time again a disregard for life and humanity. It has also openly stated intentions to apply its trademark barbaric methods not only regionally, but globally as well."

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