Re: ISIS is on the run after Obama's airstrikes
Date: September 29, 2014 06:34PM
Obirdbrain making more friends.........
President Barack Obama was facing a fierce political backlash on Monday night after he blamed US intelligence chiefs for being caught by surprise by the sudden rise of the Islamic State (Isil) terror movement in Iraq and Syria.
In a highly unusual step, Mr Obama singled out James Clapper, his director of national intelligence, when asked by a television interviewer whether he had underestimated the threat posed by Isil after its fighters burst across the Syrian border into Iraq this summer, capturing large swathes of territory.
“I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” Mr Obama told CBS News.
The president’s apparent unwillingness to take responsibility for his administration’s failure to foresee the threat was met with disbelief by both policy experts and senior Republicans, who have long warned of the risks of ceding strategic space to the jihadists in Syria.
“This was the ‘dog ate my homework speech’,” Senator John McCain, the former Republican presidential candidate who has long called for Mr Obama to arm moderate rebel forces in Syria, told Fox News, adding that Mr Obama should follow other presidents and admit his mistake.