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Obama: U.S. intelligence underestimated the Islamic State

Sep 29, 2014 10:27 am By Robert Spencer

obama wide-grin_1548848iOf course U.S. intelligence underestimated the Islamic State. U.S. intelligence is bound as a matter of policy to pretend that there is no Islamic jihad terrorism, and that when Muslims commit acts of jihad terror, they are misunderstanding their own religion and misapplying its tenets. That means that U.S. intelligence is forbidden to understand the enemy properly; is it any wonder that it underestimated the Islamic State?

“Obama says misread Islamic State; Qaeda warns of attacks on West,” by Mariam Karouny and Jonny Hogg, Reuters, September 29, 2014:

BEIRUT/MURSITPINAR Turkey (Reuters) – President Barack Obama has acknowledged that U.S. intelligence underestimated the rise of Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria, where the head of an al Qaeda branch warned militants will attack the West in retaliation for U.S.-led air strikes….

U.S.-led air strikes overnight hit a natural gas plant controlled by Islamic State fighters in eastern Syria, a monitoring body reported, part of an apparent campaign to disrupt one of the fighters’ main sources of income.

The monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said planes also struck a grain silo in northern Syria killing civilians. This could not be immediately confirmed.

Of course. Strikes against jihadis always kill innocent civilians. The “Palestinians” have taught us that.

U.S.-led strikes have so far failed to halt an advance by fighters in northern Syria on Kobani, a Kurdish town on the border with Turkey where the past week’s battle caused the fastest refugee flight of Syria’s three-year civil war….

The head of Syria’s al Qaeda branch, the Nusra Front, a Sunni militant group which is a rival of Islamic State and has also been targeted by U.S. strikes, said Islamists would carry out attacks on the West in retaliation for the campaign.

“Muslims will not watch while their sons are bombed. Your leaders will not be the only ones who would pay the price of the war. You will pay the heaviest price,” Abu Mohamad al-Golani said in an audio message posted on pro-Nusra forums….

Obama has worked since August to build an international coalition to combat the fighters, describing them last week in an address to the United Nations as a “network of death”.

His acknowledgment in an interview broadcast on Sunday that U.S. intelligence had underestimated Islamic State offered an explanation for why Washington appeared to have been taken by surprise when the fighters surged through northern Iraq in June.

The militants had gone underground when U.S. forces quashed al Qaeda in Iraq with the aid of local tribes during the U.S. war there which ended in 2011, Obama told CBS’s “60 Minutes”.

“But over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swathes of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of that chaos.”

Some of the U.S. president’s opponents at home have seized on a remark he made in January using a sports metaphor to dismiss Sunni militants in Iraq and Syria. He compared them to a low-level school basketball team posing as professionals.

“If a JV (junior varsity) team puts on Lakers uniforms, that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Obama told the New Yorker magazine in January….

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Filed Under: Barack Obama, Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. medina says

    Sep 29, 2014 at 10:38 am

    Obama underestimated (Read: IGNORED) ISIS. Others who got the intelligence briefings did not.

    That ‘stupid’ Michelle Bachmann looking not so stupid. Or Robert Spencer, who’s probably never had an intelligence briefing.

  2. AnneM says

    Sep 29, 2014 at 10:44 am

    Oh really Mr. Obama!

  3. Paleologos says

    Sep 29, 2014 at 10:53 am

    Robert,

    This is not surprising at all, really … coming from our muslim shithead POTUS …

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKqFBpk_1Eo

    … destined, no doubt, in retirement, to become a Chicago High School United States Geography Teacher.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpGH02DtIws

    Such a waste of intelligent, respectful government leadership, especially showing all our military respect for fighting and dying in muslim wars. Pass the latte, please …

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx4FZrd3-DA

    R/

    Paleologos

  4. Beagle says

    Sep 29, 2014 at 11:35 am

    Who is the greater idiot, James “largely secular Muslim Brotherhood” Clapper, or the guy who appointed him to one of the most important positions in national security and set the wrongheaded policies Clapper followed?

  5. pdxnag says

    Sep 29, 2014 at 11:36 am

    This whole Islam is not Islam lie is like a foreign intelligence operation. It is Black Propaganda, except that it is transparent. One has to be a real dolt to actually believe it.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_propaganda

  6. tpellow says

    Sep 29, 2014 at 11:54 am

    Of course, Obama underestimated the Islamic State,

    as he understimates global jihad, and underestimates the imperatives of tenets of Islam.

  7. 45charlie says

    Sep 29, 2014 at 12:00 pm

    Absolutely brutal! We all knew that long ago & he probably underestimates the Jihadi backers in his own government !

    I bet he underestimates his golf score too! What a pathetic President

  8. mariam rove says

    Sep 29, 2014 at 12:01 pm

    If anyone here watched 60 minutes last night, Obama blamed Clapper last night. Not sure what his first name is but he runs all of our intelligence agencies /operations. M

  9. Salah says

    Sep 29, 2014 at 12:17 pm

    The U.S. forces are able to quash ISIL in a week or so, someone in the W.H. is simply holding them back from doing their job. And it’s not Obama, it’s the Muslim Brotherhood – masters of the W.H.

  10. BlueRaven says

    Sep 29, 2014 at 5:00 pm

    We didn’t underestimate. We want Iranians to take on ISIS. Let these guys fight their own battles. Perhaps President has received a correct information and making a good decision.

    I am wrong in one of my arlier postings stating Obama making a fool of himself or to that extent. We should stay out of this mess and focus only on the reconnaissance missions as we are apparently doing.

    • GP says

      Oct 1, 2014 at 1:29 am

      What, let them fight their own battle at the price of a nuclear Iran? No thank you.

      theyz be the baddins!

  11. abad says

    Sep 29, 2014 at 7:03 pm

    Try as I might my puny brain cannot comprehend how a Muslim got elected POTUS post 9-11……

    • Joan in Houston says

      Sep 29, 2014 at 8:49 pm

      Because of his glib entertainment and marketing skills, no one in the so-called “popular press” cared to pursue any single inquiry in any degree of depth.

  12. Kasey says

    Sep 30, 2014 at 8:59 am

    Obama placated his own intelligence organizations by having all reference to “Islamic” , before” terrorism” in all government effects,….and appeasement more due to his mistaken attitude on Islam. Yet 99% 0f all terrorism is committed by Muslims. Now he blames everyone else but himeslf for the rise of ISIL. His naivety is alarming.

  13. Kasey says

    Sep 30, 2014 at 9:01 am

    Obama placated his own intelligence organizations by having all reference to “Islamic” , before” terrorism” REMOVED in all government effects,…. and appeasement more due to his mistaken attitude on Islam. Yet 99% 0f all terrorism is committed by Muslims. Now he blames everyone else but himeslf for the rise of ISIL. His naivety is alarming.

  14. Apollospeaks says

    Sep 30, 2014 at 10:18 am

    WOULD PRESIDENT KENNEDY HAVE BLAMED JAMES CLAPPER AND DNI FOR ISIS?

    Why is this a stupid question? Because the committed, courageous, anti-communist cold warrior would never have abandoned Iraq fearing that al-Qaida might return, or Iran fill the void, turning the costly victory of an eight year war-with billions spent and 4000 dead-into humiliating defeat. But assuming the unthinkable and that JFK had made Obama’s mistake in Iraq would he have blamed James Clapper, DNI and everyone else for the consequences? Not the mature, adult, responsible President who said this in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs debacle:

    “There’s an old saying that victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan…I’ve said as much as I feel can be usefully said by me in regard to the events of the past few days. Further statements, detailed discussions, are not to conceal responsibility, because I’m the responsible officer of the government, but merely because I, and that is quite obvious, but merely because I do not believe that such a discussion would benefit us during the present difficult situation.”

    Click http://www.apollospeaks.com to continue reading

  15. GP says

    Oct 1, 2014 at 1:21 am

    “He was given a choice between war and dishonor. He chose dishonor and he will have war anyway.”

    “An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last.”

    “I never worry about action, but only about inaction.”

    -Sir Winston Churchill

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