Posted on 09/29/2014 8:51:01 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
During his appearance on 60 Minutes Sunday, President Barack Obama had the chance to admit that he got a whole lot about Iraq wrong.
He could have admitted that he got the surge wrong in 2007, when he denounced it and declared that there is no military solution to the problems in Iraq and never was. That was wrong. Obama opposed that surge, which worked and bequeathed a quiescent Iraq to him in 2009. He later implemented a surge of his own in Afghanistan — half-hearted though it was.
Obama could also have admitted that he withdrew U.S. troops from Iraq too soon, a decision made for politics that ended up creating the conditions for ISIS to swallow up a large chunk of Iraq and Syria.
Obama could have also admitted that he got ISIS wrong, when he called them the “JV” of terrorism. They are in fact an offshoot of al Qaeda, just as the so-called Khorasan group is an offshoot of al Qaeda — the jihadist group that he claims to have “decimated” and sent scurrying “on the run.” He could have admitted that none of that was true, that al Qaeda is mestasizing from the border regions in Pakistan-Afghanistan to Iraq and Syria to Yemen to Somalia to Boko Haram in Nigeria. And possibly to Oklahoma and New Jersey and Portland.
Instead of admitting any of that, Obama blamed one of his subordinates.
Steve Kroft: I understand all the caveats about these regional groups. But this is what an army of 40,000 people, according to some of the military estimates I heard the other day, very well-trained, very motivated.
President Obama: Well, part of it was that…
Steve Kroft: What? How did they end up where they are in control of so much territory? Was that a complete surprise to you?
President Obama: Well I think, our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria.
“They” work for you, Mr. President.
This isn’t the first time that James Clapper has made a monumental, deadly screw-up, as you’ll see on the next page. Sen. Dianne Feinstein blamed Clapper for blaming Benghazi on a YouTube movie.
Clapper also lied under oath directly to Congress concerning the government’s spying on Americans.
While Clapper was spying on Americans, and lying about it, he believed that the Muslim Brotherhood is “mostly secular.” The Muslim Brotherhood, now banned in Egypt, are the fountainhead for the Islamic radical reformation and the global jihad.
And yet after all of this, and now “underestimating” ISIS, Clapper remains the director of National Intelligence. If Obama is serious, and Clapper truly is at fault, this ought to be his third strike.
Obama’s answer to Kroft brings up another issue that bears discussion.
Some of us warned loudly that stovepiping intelligence through a single point of failure — the director of National Intelligence — would end up being a problem. Prior to creation of the DNI, presidents received intelligence from a multitude of competing agencies. That had problems of its own, but it did give presidents different points of view on intelligence. The DNI submerges the competition in intel down a few levels, to a point where the president may not even be aware that it exists.
Now, the DNI office and that person filter all of the intelligence that gets to the president’s eyes. In James Clapper, we have a person who has openly lied to Congress, who lacks even a basic understanding of jihadism, and now according to Obama, has “underestimated” the Islamic State. Our single point of failure is in fact a many-times failure.
There are two possibilities when it comes to stovepiping intelligence. The DNI could filter all intelligence based on his own ignorance and biases, or because he is telling the president what he knows the president wants to hear in order to keep his own job. The two possibilities are not mutually exclusive.
This might be another stopped-clock-is-right-twice-a-day moment. The intelligence failure in underassessing the threat posed by the DAISH (I prefer the Arabic acronym) might well be due to Clapper, who seems to be the champion of the NSA using its resources to make war on the citizenry of the United States, rather than directing its effort overseas as its mission as our foreign signals-intelligence arm would dictate. (Yes, make war — the conduct of signals-intelligence is a war measure, that it why the NSA’s program is so offensive, and would remain offensive even if there were a non-human algorithmic filter constructed by serious civil libertarians built into the system to prevent “abuse”.)
Maybe if the NSA had been attending to what was going on in the Middle East, rather than using it resources to analyse all our cell-phone calls (oh, it’s just “metadata” and “business records”) they might have noticed that the DAISH wasn’t Al Qaeda’s “jayvee” squad.
I don’t know how we’re going to survive two more years of this POS usurper and saboteur. He hasn’t even acknowledged the terrorist murder in OK, but he’s right there with both feet in his mouth every time a thug gets killed by someone practicing self-defense. It’s unprecedented for a president to not acknowledge the terrorist murder of an American citizen on American soil, but this POS is not doing it.
Clearly, Clapper is as dumb as a dust mite, but, what kind of idiot is ObOzO to believe him.
Stupid and loyal elitists.
All easily manipulated girls....ALL of THEM!! There’s not a complete set in the bunch!
She would explode! Rage would have her eyes rolling like the wheels on a truck. Anger would have her foaming at the mouth like a rabid badger. Her knuckles would be raw from knocking the teeth out of those offering more destructive nonsense. Her brain would ache from the collective IQ in the room coming in below a mediocre golf score if she excludes her own.
I hope that you’re not suggesting that NSA was NOT attending to what is going on in the Middle East. I’ve been retired for some time now, but before I hung up my cans, I can tell you that the Agency has NOT turned its attention away from the Middle East.
That's why we send bombers and missles AT NIGHT against ISIS , and we destroy EMPTY offices and buildings, and break out windows
because according to the administration's ROE "we hit'em where they ain't", but we break a lot of windows,destroy furniture, and incinerate their cell phones.
To be effective , you hit their offices at 11:00AM while they are working, you hit their training schools, you take away their supply lines and ammo dumps, etc.,etc.
This war against terrorism is all theatre and looking good in the press saying that we are doing something; it is not designed to terminate ISIS or terrorism.
It is designed to fail .
Kabuki theater. That’s all it is. The gullible love it.
She had the same intel that Obama had.
No, but resources devoted to what I have just argued is a war measure against the citizenry of the United States might have been deployed instead against foreign targets.
Arabic linguists are not going to use their talents against US civilians. Doesn’t make sense.
No, but computing resources might be (have been) turned to expanded automated monitoring of Arabic and other Muslim-language chatter, rather than toward warrantless domestic surveillance, and money might have been spent hiring more Arabic linguists instead of building infrastructure for a panopticon state in Utah.
I see from other reports that the possibility I had allowed that Obama’s passing the blame was a stopped-clock-twice-a-day instance, was not, in fact the case, and that his intelligence briefings even late in his last term had included warnings about the DAISH (a.k.a. ISIL, ISIS or lately IS). While I’m happy that the use of NSA resources to monitor American citizens in violation of the plain meaning of the Constitution, if not of some twisted interpretation given by secret courts (what would the Founders thing of secret courts?), was not, in this instance, responsible for the imperilment of our material safety, I’m still not pleased with the conduct of signals intelligence against the American citizenry as a whole.
I spent 33 years with the Agency, almost all of it on the tip of the spear, 22 years overseas. In my job I would’ve seen intercepts between US persons. I never saw ONE. We were continually reminded of our responsibilities under the 4th Amendment; a violation could result in dismissal or prosecution. If it went on, it was pretty well hidden.
Unfortunately, between Snowden's revelations, and with the decay of the Zeitgeist into what I call "the Era of Bad Stewards", I'm not so confident that all those now in the NSA are serving as honorably as you did in your 33 years.
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