Congress: U.S. Military Cooked Islamic State Intelligence

U.S. President Barack Obama (R) acknowledges Defense Secretary Ash Carter (L) in his remarks after a briefing on U.S. efforts against the Islamic State (ISIS), at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia July 6, 2015. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Nancy Youssef and Shane Harris, Daily Beast: ISIS Intel Was Cooked, House Panel Finds

A leading U.S. general pressured his intelligence analysts into playing down the ISIS and al Qaeda threats, according to a congressional task force.

A House Republican task force has found that officials from the U.S. military’s Central Command altered intelligence reports to portray the U.S. fight against ISIS and al Qaeda in a more positive light than lower-level analysts believed was warranted by the facts on the ground, three officials familiar with the task force’s findings told The Daily Beast.

A roughly 10-page report on the controversy is expected to be released by the end of next week, two officials said. While it contains no definitive evidence that senior Obama administration officials ordered the reports to be doctored, the five-month investigation did corroborate earlier reports that analysts felt the leaders of CENTCOM’s intelligence directorate pressured them to conclude that the threat from ISIS was not as ominous as the analysts believed, the officials said.

Read more ....

Update #1: Military Lied About ISIS Intel To Please Obama, Congress Says (Daily Caller)
Update #2: House panel finds US military compelled intel analysts to downplay ISIS threat – report (RT)

WNU Editor: I am not surprised. This blog has been reporting and cataloguing the rise of the Islamic State since the beginning .... and I have commented more than once that the Pentagon and the White House response to this rise has been one of denial, ambivalence, and confidence that was not warranted. So why the denial .... we now know that the intel was wrong, and Pentagon/White House officials and politicians did not ask the right questions when it was clear that events happening on the ground were opposite from what they were being told. In short .... the Pentagon, White House, the oversight committees in Congress, and the media .... it looks like they were all either asleep at the wheel or in their own version of "everything is awesome".