60 Minutes/CBS
Why Obama Can’t Say His Spies Underestimated ISIS -- Eli Lake, Daily Beast
On ‘60 Minutes,’ the president faulted his spies for failing to predict the rise of ISIS. There’s one problem with that statement: The intelligence analysts did warn about the group.
Nearly eight months ago, some of President Obama’s senior intelligence officials were already warning that ISIS was on the move. In the beginning of 2014, ISIS fighters had defeated Iraqi forces in Fallujah, leading much of the U.S. intelligence community to assess they would try to take more of Iraq.
But in an interview that aired Sunday evening, the president told 60 Minutes that the rise of the group now proclaiming itself a caliphate in territory between Syria and Iraq caught the U.S. intelligence community off guard. Obama specifically blamed James Clapper, the current director of national intelligence: “Our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that, I think, they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” he said.
Reached by The Daily Beast after Obama’s interview aired, one former senior Pentagon official who worked closely on the threat posed by Sunni jihadists in Syria and Iraq was flabbergasted. “Either the president doesn’t read the intelligence he’s getting or he’s bullshitting,” the former official said.
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My Comment: This is one of the reasons why I have trouble supporting President Obama .... he is always quick to blame everyone .... but never himself ... especially when we fill that he deserves it. On the issue of President Obama blaming the U.S. intelligence community for underestimating the rise of ISIS .... I am with Eli Lake on this one .. President Obama was told about the rise of ISIS .... he just choose to ignore it. The way I see it .... if this blog could chronicle accurately the rise of the Islamic State since last year .... I am sure that the U.S. intelligence community .... with it`s enormous resources .... figured out the same thing a few weeks before I did. But this turn of affairs should not surprise anyone ..... when it comes to intelligence the problem has always been political .... especially an unwillingness on the part of this administration to acknowledge what was happening in the Middle East, coupled with a reluctance among House Republicans to NOT ask the hard questions as per their constitutional oversight responsibilities. In short .... everyone is to blame ... including President Obama.
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