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Obama Called ISIS “JVs” Even While Intel Briefings Told Him They Were a Serious Threat
Posted By Daniel Greenfield On September 3, 2014 @ 9:32 am In The Point | 15 Comments
When Obama called ISIS a JV team, they had taken Fallujah. US intel knew their capabilities, even though Obama Inc. has insisted on blaming bad intel for his dismissive comments.
But the intel wasn’t bad. The intel is rarely that bad. It’s the leadership that’s bad.
A former Pentagon official confirms to Fox News that detailed and specific intelligence about the rise of ISIS was included in the PDB, or the President’s Daily Brief, for at least a year before the group took large swaths of territory beginning in June.
The official, who asked not to be identified because the PDB is considered the most authoritative, classified intelligence community product providing the President with analysis of sensitive international events, said the data was strong, and “granular” in detail, adding a policy maker “…could not come away with any other impression: This is getting bad.”
The official who has close knowledge of the process said the President, who reads the PDB unlike his predecessors who traditionally had the document briefed to them, was not known to come back to the intelligence community with further questions or “taskings.” Asked to describe the frequency, the former Pentagon official said “not generally.”
After suggestions that the administration may have been blindsided by the rise of ISIS, and that poor intelligence was to blame, the former Pentagon official said some of the intelligence was so good it was described as “exquisite” when the President drew a red line on chemical weapons use in Syria in 2012.
The source who is familiar with the deliberations said “(we) were ready to fire, on a moments notice, on a couple hundred targets,” but no order was given. In some cases, targets were tracked for a “long period of time” but then slipped away.
Obama knew ISIS was a threat. He had the ability to stop ISIS long before it got this bad. But that would have sabotaged his narrative about defeating Al Qaeda and ending the Iraq War.
So as usual Obama put politics ahead of national security.
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