I have noticed that Obama and his entire regime seem to make a point of referring to the islamic terror group as "ISIL" rather than the more commonly used "ISIS." It finally bugged me enough to post about this when I heard clips of Ashton Carter's confirmation hearing in the Senate. McCain asked him something about ISIS, and in his response Carter repeated it as ISIL. I think it is clear that there is an official policy within the regime that the term is going to be "ISIL" and I suspect they coached Carter in this regard.
What do you think their rationale is? ISIS stands for "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" and ISIL stands for "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" and one theory I've heard is that it all comes down to that word "Levant." The Levant, i.e. the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, includes Israel. Could the regime's preference for "ISIL" be a way of asserting that the Levant is fundamentally Islamic, and hence Israel is an illegitimate anomaly on that backdrop.
Or maybe it's no more complicated than his insistence on saying "Pock-ee-stahn."