Was going for a round of golf an error?

Yes, admitted U.S. President Barack Obama last Sunday.

Why? Because just after referring to U.S. journalist, James Foley, who had been beheaded by the Islamic State, he picked up his vacation golf club and headed for a tee last month.

"I should have anticipated the optics," Obama admitted in an NBC "Meet the Press" interview on Sunday. He defended himself in the press barrage, after he was shot taking a vacation in Martha's Vineyard, a resort island.

He had met and spoken to the Foley family, "...where it was hard for me to hold back tears listening to the pain that they were going through," reports USAToday. However, there was always a difference between various events, and his round had only been an attempt to seek some relief through recreation, he added.

He agreed that occasionally how he conducted himself publicly left much to be desired. "Part of this job, is also the theater of it." It was not natural or easy for him to pursue it, yet he assured that he would be "mindful" of it.

The half-hour interview on NBC concluded with the revealing question about his golf round from Chuck Todd, a fresh moderator. It came on air on Sunday, though it had been recorded the day before.

Though most of the interview was about the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Ebola virus, immigrants to the U.S. and forthcoming Congressional elections after a few months, this was the question that struck the public eye the most.

The rest of his answers were fairly illuminating, in which Obama outlined his plans to appraise Congress about his plans to battle the extremists, and his public address on Wednesday, a day before the 13th year anniversary of the WTC attacks.

He refuted the idea of the U.S. planning for anything like the Iraq War. It is like the "counter-terrorism campaigns" that his party has been involved in for the past seven years, he said.

He revealed that there were days when he could not catch up on his sleep because of the work load. Obama said that after returning from a four-day trip with NATO in Europe, he was told not only that America is the "only indispensable nation", but we "perhaps have never been more indispensable." Feeling that its leadership was making a difference, it filled him with satisfaction, motivating him to go on with things, even without enough sleep.