ISIS threat misjudged, Obama says
WASHINGTON — U. S. President Barack Obama acknowledged that American intelligence agencies underestimated the threat from Islamic State militants and overestimated the ability and will of Iraq’s army to fight.
Questioning Obama’s strategy to destroy the group, House Speaker John Boehner said the U. S. may have “no choice” but to send in American troops if the mix of U. S.- led airstrikes and a ground campaign reliant on Iraqi forces, Kurdish fighters and soon- to- be trained Syrian rebels fails to achieve that goal.
Boehner, in an interview broadcast Sunday, did agree with the White House that Obama had the power to order airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, but said he believes Congress should consider a resolution authorizing the use of force for this specific mission.
Boehner said he would bring lawmakers back to Washington — they are not set to return until after the Nov. 4 election — if Obama were to seek such a resolution.
Obama described the U. S. intelligence assessments in response to a question during a CBS 60 Minutes interview that was airing Sunday night. He was asked about how Islamic State fighters had come to control so much territory in Syria and Iraq and whether it was a surprise to him.
The president said that during the Iraq war, U. S. military forces with the help of Iraq’s Sunni tribes were able to quash al- Qaida fighters, who went “back underground.”
“During the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of that chaos,” Obama said, according to an excerpt released before the show aired.
He noted that his director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has acknowledged that the U. S. “underestimated what had been taking place in Syria.” Obama also said it was “absolutely true” that the U. S. overestimated the ability and will of the Iraqi army.
At an August news conference, Obama said “there is no doubt” that the Islamic State group’s advance “has been more rapid than the intelligence estimates” suggested it would be.
National Security Agency director Mike Rogers, at an intelligence conference this month, expressed regret that his agency had not been “a little stronger” in tracking Islamic State’s shift “from an insurgency to an organization that was now focused on holding ground, territory, the mechanism of governance.”
The White House pushed back against Boehner’s comments on ABC’s This Week about the potential need for American ground troops to confront the militants.
Asked whether he would recommend sending in Americans if no one else was able to step up, Boehner said, “We have no choice. These are barbarians. They intend to kill us. And if we don’t destroy them first, we’re going to pay the price.”
But Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Tony Blinken, said the country would not see a repeat of the Iraq war.
“Hundreds of thousands of Americans on the ground in the Middle East getting bogged down, that’s exactly what al- Qaida wants,” Blinken said.
“That’s not what we’re going to do.”
Blinken said Sunday the United States is investigating reports on social media that the leader of the al- Qaida- affiliated Khorasan group was killed in an air strike in Syria. Blinken said there were “serious indicators” that Muhsin al- Fadhli may have been killed in last week’s strikes, when the U. S. fired Tomahawk missiles in a nighttime offensive west of Aleppo.
“We can’t confirm it,” Blinken said. “We’re obviously trying to dig into this, get confirmation. We want to make sure he’s not trying to, in effect, fake his death and go underground. But there are serious indicators he was removed.”
Twitter accounts of alleged alQaida members monitored by the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks terrorist activity, have included postings suggesting al- Fadhli was killed. One such posting, by Twitter handle mh4444, said he was “martyred today in Syria by the U. S. bombing.”
In Beirut, the leader of the Nusra Front, al- Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, vowed Sunday that his group would “use all possible means” to fight back against air strikes by the U. S.- led coalition and warned the conflict would reach western countries joining the alliance. The U. S. views the Nusra Front as a terrorist group, but Syrian rebels have long seen it as a potent ally against both the Islamic State extremist group, which is the main target of the coalition, and Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.
Syrian rebels, activists and analysts have warned that targeting the Nusra Front will inject more chaos into the Syrian conflict and indirectly help Assad by striking one of his main adversaries.