Many Missteps In Assessment of ISIS Threat -- Peter Baker and Eric Schmittsept, NYT
WASHINGTON — By late last year, classified American intelligence reports painted an increasingly ominous picture of a growing threat from Sunni extremists in Syria, according to senior intelligence and military officials. Just as worrisome, they said, were reports of deteriorating readiness and morale among troops next door in Iraq.
But the reports, they said, generated little attention in a White House consumed with multiple brush fires and reluctant to be drawn back into Iraq. “Some of us were pushing the reporting, but the White House just didn’t pay attention to it,” said a senior American intelligence official. “They were preoccupied with other crises,” the official added. “This just wasn’t a big priority.”
The White House denies that, but the threat certainly has its attention now as American warplanes pound the extremist group calling itself the Islamic State in hopes of reversing its lightning-swift seizing of territory in Iraq and Syria. Still, even as bombs fall from the sky thousands of miles away, the question of how it failed to anticipate the rise of a militant force that in the space of a few months has redrawn the map of the Middle East resonates inside and outside the Obama administration.
Read more ....
My Comment: The New York Times tries to explain why the White House failed to understand the threat posed by the Islamic State .... I am not impressed by their explanation. This blog has been covering the emergence of the the Islamic State since last year, and our analysis has been spot on.
3 comments:
WNU,
Have you noticed that the theme of these support articles has gone from attacking the critic relentlessly, to making excuses for the Administration.
James .... I have been reading and studying the U.S. news media since the early 1980s .... and I have never seen anything like it. It reminds me of the old Soviet press .... they always attacked the critic, but when they could not hide the fact that everything was falling apart .... they then started to look for excuses up to the day when the the old hammer and sickle flag came down at the Kremlin.
I thought it might look a little familiar.
Post a Comment