https://youtube.com/watch?v=lU3UbYZ-scI
President Obama admitted some failure in assessing and confronting the Islamic State before the group grew into a regional threat, telling 60 Minutes that U.S. intelligence had “underestimated” how rapidly the group could expand.
“I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that, I think, they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” Obama said.
But the intelligence community disagrees, saying that the White House was repeatedly warned about the Islamic State threat. “Either the president doesn’t read the intelligence he’s getting or he’s bulls***ing,” a former Pentagon official told the Daily Beast on Sunday.
The Islamic State took the Iraqi city of Fallujah back in January, prompting warnings at the time that the jihadist threat could soon spiral out of control. Public testimony from the intelligence community soon after, in February and March, predicted that the group would soon try to seize more territory.