ABC: Obama was warned about ISIS
ABC is starting to impress me. They have an article which refutes the President’s claim on 60 Minutes the other day that the intelligence services were caught off guard by the ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State folks.
At the White House daily briefing, Press Secretary Josh Earnest cast the net quite a bit wider.
“Everybody was surprised to see the rapid advance that ISIL was able to make from Syria across the Iraqi border,” said Earnest. “To be able to take over such large swaths of territory in Iraq did come as a surprise.”
But for nearly a year, senior officials in the U.S. government have been warning about the alarming rise of ISIS, or ISIL as the terrorist group is also known, and the inability of the Iraqi government to confront the threat.
Here are three examples:
I’m not going to C&P the rest of the article, but you should click over and read how intelligence officials in the Obama Administration warned the administration about the exact outcome that we’re witnessing. And here’s the press conference where the conversation above took place;
More ABC news videos | ABC Entertainment News
The truth of it all is that the Obama Administration ignored the evidence hoping the problem would go away like so many other things going on in the world that they’d wished would go away, but only became more unmanageable.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden
Iowahawk-https://twitter.com/iowahawkblog/status/516280690749362177
Obama, June: I think ISIS is a JV team. Obama, now: They thought ISIS was a JV team. #CaptainPronoun
Every once in a while, they’ll suddenly realize “oh my God, I used to have integrity!”
I won’t believe it’s a trend just so yet, but it’s nice to see regardless
Well, once, again, this administration plays the ignorance card. “We didn’t know”, ” we are as surprised as you”, “I found out about it on the news, just like you”.
Either you’re lying through your teeth or you’re the most incompetent administration ever. Which is it? Either answer makes you look bad.
Can I answer “Both” Alex?
Yes, incompetent liars fits the bill perfectly.
All of the above, AND, it’s Bush’s fault.
Well, since there is a report out there that the President skips damn near 60% of his daily security briefings, it would make sense that he had no idea what was going on. Maybe that’s why he skips them i.e. plausible deniability?
Drudge has an article up from Breitbart claiming that president mom-jeans skips 60% of his daily briefings.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/09/29/Report-Obama-Has-Missed-Over-Half-His-Second-Term-Daily-Intel-Briefings
The story is pretty damning and, at this point, I could be convinced that he’s deliberately NOT reading them. The article claims he doesn’t want personal briefings, just written copies.
This man is a figurehead president, and NOT acting in the best interests of our people, or the Constitution he swore to protect and defend.
Can’t interrupt is apologizing for America and his multiple rounds of golf. I’m sure another massive attack on our soil will just be considered another work related incident in his book.
If Mr. Obama had been focused on and working hard on domestic issues while ignoring foreign policy and national security issues, he could say “we have different priorities” and he could still say that he was competent. But he hasn’t done anything in any area. He said something about Michael Brown, I think it was the wrong thing … does anyone think that counts? I don’t.
He got Obamacare passed. We have an effective training/fighting force in Iraq. He likes to finger paint red lines in Syria. We have an effective training/fighting force in Afghanistan. He took a strong and principled stand on the IRS scandal. He accepted full responsibility for Benghazi. Due to his leadership, the economy is fully recovered. His leadership in the Ukraine has been notable. We have that excellent treaty with Iran over nuclear weapons. Our military is lean and mean and widely feared. We have a highly effective energy policy and our infrastructure is in the best shape ever.
Not.
Why exactly did the nation reelect this guy?
Because the voting public goes for style over substance, Richard – and has the attention span of a flea.
Frankly I think your comment is just too mean to fleas.
He was elected by a bunch of horny, drooling women who reacted to him like teenie-beats at a 1960s rock concert. They’re the same women who read ‘Twilight’ along with their tweeny daughters and made it a hit.
They voted with their crotches, not their brains. This is the result.
Did you see the first inaugural? I haven’t seen anything like that since the Beatles got off the plane at LaGuardia in 1964. The second was almost as bad as the first.
And the rest of us got stuck with him.
I’ve never looked at it that way.
It makes sense, though. There’s a lot to be said to the power of hysteria and hormones, male and female.
Obama basically ignores everything that doesn’t help him “fundamentally transform America”…and golf…until it reaches crisis proportions. Then he evades and makes excuses while dodging blame. I noticed that whenever he’s caught, like now, Obama always says “we” or “the US” missed that sign or this, or he blames “his predecessors” in the Bush administration. Obama can never accept blame for his failings.
They did a staff analysis, probably at the WH level only and determined it would be the next guys problem.
Ooops.
And by staff analysis I mean they asked Valerie Jarrett.
The real boss at the White House.
She may be the smartest person in the current administration, but that ain’t saying much. And like the Glorious Leader himself, she’s nowhere near as smart as she thinks she is, by many orders of magnitude. Bitchiness does not equal intelligence.
I wonder if he is going for the Beer Summit move here.
No time for a beer summit.
To busy perpetuating gay rights issues.
Depending on how much beer they drink, they may be *perpetrating* Gay Rights Issues.
Cmon trolls, try to defend Obumbles. Please.
Isn’t he due to go on vacation after going golfing this weekend?
They’re still trying to come up with some half-assed rationale that claims that it’s somehow Bush’s fault that Barry can’t be bothered to do his Goddamned job.
This revelation about the Glorious Leader’s competence and commitment to his job should come as a surprise to nobody who’s been paying attention. And Shotgun Joe is no better. You know that even if he attends a briefing, he’s way too shitfaced to have any idea what’s going on.
The briefs I was part of on this contained material that was passed to WH staff. This material DID INCLUDE buildup and warnings of activity along the Iraq/Syria border. This DID INCLUDE warnings that AQ was growing much stronger in that region, and was in effect erasing the border.
This wasn’t just briefed once or twice. It was part of that regional briefing (Levant). Did the WH staff manage to include it in THEIR briefings? We couldn’t tell- all we could do was pass it along. If it’s serious enough to pass to the Chairman’s brief, it’s serious enough to get to WH staff.
They knew. They knew. They just didn’t believe it…
^^^ Word. ^^^
Head in sand, huh? How deeply has it been buried? I know how long, but how deep?
Geez, Mr. Wolf, that sounds like my mother’s consistent denial reaction to something horrible: ‘Oh, I’m sure that’s not true’ or ‘I don’t see how they can say that’. Seriously – those are quotes out of my mother’s mouth.
+1 on Mr. Wolf’s comments. I would add that the NSC took an active hand in trying to shape intel going to the WH. Course they shaped it to fit their political agenda. What can you expect with the likes of Susan Rice.
In the case of ABC, I am thinking this is going to be a new “hip” thing to do. The mainstream media is going to begin a throwdown on Obama because its the “hip” thing to do right now. (Hashtag YOLO)
I could be wrong, but I expect that CBS and NBC will throw a few hard punches in with some “journalistic integrity” proclamations on the side.
Frankly, this isn’t the first or even tenth time Obama has played “they messed up” because he likes to profess “the they” as the stupid ones.
Lest you forget and the most important fact of them all, “I killed Bin Laden” and nothing else matters….
Obama’s a has-been. It’s Hillary that they’ll circle the wagons for at this point.
A new figurehead, and the eating-their-own commences
I give no credit to the MSM on this “hard-hitting journalism” or for newfound “journalistic integrity.” They did the same crap in the fading years of the Clinton administration.
Once their messiah is a lame duck they start tearing him down to establish their street cred to push their next anointed (or attack the opposition). That way, the MSM can point to interviews/coverage like this and say “See, we aren’t biased. Look how tough we were on Obama.”
Even the Brits are daring to call BS on MIC’s passing the buck. Just one:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2774122/Obama-accurate-intelligence-ISIS-BEFORE-2012-election-says-administration-insider.html#ixzz3EkBOWlx9
Pretty disgusting the way the CinC threw his intel establishment under the bus. Apparently he doesn’t realize that when you’re the top man, you can’t blame your subordinates for screwing up because you are ultimately responsible.
Try to imagine what would happen if a corps commander called a division commander on the carpet to ask why the division commander had been surprised by the enemy, and the division commander blamed his G2 or one of his brigade commanders. That Division commander would be fired so fast it would make his head spin.
Navy types can confirm or deny if this is true but I’ve heard that if a ship runs aground, that captain’s career is over. Even if he was asleep in his quarters at the time, he’s the captain and he’s responsible.
Yeah but that’s not the way it works at Baskin Robbins.
Martin…yup.
The CO can delegate authority, not responsibility.
Too bad the current administration finds this a foreign concept.
It’s true. The fish always stinks from the head.
Yup. The CO is responsible no matter who is at the helm. If he’s sleeping in his quarters and some Junior Officer runs the ship aground, no matter the reason, it’s usually the end of the skipper’s career.
The way it was explained when I asked about that is that the Captain is responsible for training and assignment of the crew. If a junior watch officer runs the ship aground, the Captain’s responsibility is twofold: One, he should have made sure the guy was sufficiently trained to avoid the mishap. Two, he shouldn’t have left the idiot/new guy in control of the ship if he couldn’t do it safely.
Applied to the Glorious Leader’s bullshit, the people he is blaming for failure are the ones he appointed, who he assured us were the right people for the job. Either way, he owns this.
When you make commander in chief of a guy who has never had to accept responsibility in his life due to race and affirmative action, this is the result.
When my younger brother in Santa Barbara back in 2008 told me he was voting for Obama, I tried to dissuade him with the argument that the guy had never had any leadership role nor executive experience, thus no organizational responsibility.
He ignored that reality and voted for him anyway, but he sure as hell realizes now that big brother was right once again. But he’ll still probably vote for Hillary. After all, he voted for Guv Moonbeam. California tends to do that to people’s brains I guess.
This is one more example of the willful ignorance of this administration. Yes, it is neither stupidity nor incompetence. It is willful ignorance – a deliberate decision to not acknowledge information in an immature attempt to avoid responsibility.
Mistakes in judgment can be corrected. Even stupidity can be overcome by injecting some smart people in the circle. Many of the folks making policy are plenty smart and just fine on the judgment scale. They simply walk to the beat of a drummer which has nothing to do with the good of the country. It’s their agenda before all else, to the point that they refuse to hear anything which does not support that agenda.
Willful ignorance is much more dangerous than either incompetence or stupidity.
I’m still going to hapr on the ‘everything is just fine’ meme, because that bugbear – plausible deniability – has been at work since the day that marone raised his right hand.
In some ways, I don’t think he actually had the faintest idea what the job meant, and his pocket pets (V & M) made sure he di what they wanted, not what was best for the rest of the country. His crappy golf game has always been more important to him than doing his job. He can’t even make a freethrow that a 6th grade girl could make.
No, he doesn’t get to escape his responsibility for any of it. I think he simply never gave a damn about any of it in the first place, as long as his plate was full.
Even those of us on the outside looking in knew about this threat months ago, while he was out making his tee time. His disconnect from reality is backfiring in his face. People are turning their backs on him in large numbers, etc. He’s nothing but an empty vessel, never has been anything but that and now more and more people see it and are – well, worried?
It goes beyond incompetence, to the GAF/GAS attitude that he has constantly displayed, like that little tantrum he threw a few months ago, on TV, (they blame ME) – remember that? That said it all for me.
Unfortunately for him, karmic backlash works in peculiar ways and is working on him now.
I think it’s best expressed this way: Everything ripens at its time and becomes fruit at its hour.
Being president to obama is a great deal like golf to him: He sucks at both. (Love the commentary on this 33 second clip.)
You’d think a guy who plays more rounds of golf per year than Tiger Woods wouldn’t suck so bad at it.
Damn!
Worse than I thought! Worse than I am at it!
Divot!!!
“The truth of it all is that the Obama Administration ignored the evidence hoping the problem would go away like so many other things going on in the world that they’d wished would go away, but only became more unmanageable.”
I commented on the previous thread about Obama’s statement of “intelligence agencies” missing this. In my post then I called him a LIAR!!! No surprise and I said I knew full well that the Pentagon and ALL intelligence agencies concerned had told him FULL WELL, the truth of the situation in Iraq and he ignored it purposefully. If fact I added that I expected his response to them being, “This does not leave this room and your comments are that all things are under control and being analyzed daily and dealt with. PERIOD”. Knowing it’s their job to say otherwise and knowing further NONE of them had the balls to tell the truth to the press, this fiasco continued until, yet again, Obama is shown to be the cowardly liar he is, has always been and always will be.
And yet the liberal dipshiteratti still go on about how Bush could have prevented 9/11, etc., yet ignore the fact their boy Elroy doesn’t even attend 60+ percent of the daily security briefings.
Dipshiteratti? Sparks, I do believe you have coined a neologism.
Well, Sparks did claim last week that hanging around this bunch has improved writing skills. 😉
HIS. HIS %#*^& writing skills!
B. Hussein 0bama, the first POTUS to:
NOT attend the annual Army-Navy football game
NOT have an official White House observation of Christmas, but said something about Ramadan
Had a gathering of brutal third world dictators at the White House
Had the Dalai Lama quickly ushered out the back door of the White House by the previous day’s trash and hurried to receive a Chinese delegation
Went to bed and got a good night’s sleep while Benghazi burned and four Americans were brutally murdered, no response team called for rescue, B-HO jetted off to Las Vegas aboard AF One for a campaign rally
Returned from the golf course to make a brief statement about an American Citizen beheaded by terrorists, then rushed back to golfing…
I could go on for hours…
Well, he didn’t think Ebola was an issue either.
Michael Jackson must be rolling over in his grave.
Obummer has out “moonwalked” him.
Everyone has just reiterated what we already knew after someone called him “articulate” and he still won the senate seat and the Presidency.
The only pay grade he is not above is his narcissism. Pass the buck, blame Bush,pick anything. But don’t pass him the Accountability Card. Ever.