What Did President Obama Know about ISIS...and When Did He Know It?

There is only one story this week -- President Obama's refusal to take responsibility for the mess he created in the Middle East, instead blaming US intelligence, and the military, for "underestimating" ISIS and "overestimating" Iraqi army capabilities. Attacks come from all political persuasions and from around the world. But it is not surprising that members of the US Congress are in the lead. They feel the heavy weight of their leadership in the face of fears for a future in which ISIS is not defeated but permitted to continue its march toward Europe and America. They are not only criticizing Obama but also defending the American intelligence and military communities. ~~~~~ Representative Peter King charged Monday that President Obama "dropped the ball" on ISIS and is "trying to blame everyone but himself." King, a member of the House Intelligence and Homeland Security Committees, says the intelligence community and lawmakers have known for months how dangerous ISIS is. "A real leader, a true leader, does not blame other people," King told NBC. "We've known for over a year how dangerous ISIS was...In fact, Lieutenant General Flynn from the Defense Intelligence Agency testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in February, four months before ISIS made its major offensive in northern Iraq, that we should expect an offensive by ISIS." Flynn said ISIS "probably will attempt to take territory in Iraq and Syria to exhibit its strength in 2014," adding that ISIS would likely be helped "by its ability to concurrently maintain multiple safe havens in Syria." Flynn also warned that after US troops were pulled out of Iraq in December 2011, ISIS "exploited the permissive security environment to increase its operations and presence in many locations and has also expanded into Syria and Lebanon to inflame tensions throughout the region." King said that Obama should not blame the intelligence community because it was "very concerned about ISIS." King insisted that from his role on the Homeland Security Committee, he knew about the ISIS threat in 2013 : "Then in February, Fallujah fell. We had a six or seven month lead-up to this." But months later, King said, in July and August, "the President was acting as if he just heard about ISIS." The President had "all this time to work out a plan, to try to line up a coalition," King said. "Instead, instead, he didn't. (Like) last year with Syria, he threatened air strikes and didn't follow through." King says "someone" has to put troops on the ground in the fight against ISIS : "We have almost 2,000 troops on the ground....We are going to have to use special forces in some ways. We'll have to have spotters on the ground." And, King said Americans will need to be embedded with the Iraqi army to coordinate movements with the Kurds and provide leadership, but Obama is "trying to pass it off." Obama also "dropped the ball" when it came to Syria, King explained -- two years ago, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former CIA director General David Petraeus, and former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta urged America to train and arm the Free Syrian Army. Obama "was saying people just wanted us to throw guns and weapons towards them," but that was a false claim. Are you really saying that Hillary Clinton and Panetta are willing to just give guns to anyone? The fact is, the President dropped the ball. He dropped it in Syria, he dropped it with Isis. Now he's trying to blame everyone but himself." ~~~~~ The King timeline is corroborated by Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who says President Obama was warned well in advance that ISIS was becoming a significant threat, the Hill reports. Rogers, who is a former FBI agent, said in a statement that US intelligence was not to blame as the White House scrambles to explain lapses and engage a global coalition against ISIS. Rogers said that his committee urged the administration as recently as 2013 that they should act against ISIS immediately : "For over a year, US intelligence agencies specifically warned that ISIS was taking advantage of the situation in Syria to recruit members and provoke violence that could spill into Iraq and the rest of the region." Rogers was not alone in strongly refuting the President's assertions. NBC News reported that others in the intelligence community said he had been previously urged to engage - and now seemed to be throwing them under the bus amid his own inaction. “We have been talking about ISIS for quite some time,” one intelligence official told NBC. “They were in the mix right from the start.” Another intel official said : “It’s been a significant intelligence challenge for a long time,” noting that ISIS prowess on social media gave plenty of clues that they were on the rise. “I was trying to figure out what he meant by ‘underestimated.'…The swelling of ISIS’s ranks was very visible by 2013." ~~~~~ Representative Ron DeSantis, a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Judiciary Committee, said Monday on Newmax TV that on "60 Minutes," President Obama went down his usual path of passing the buck by blaming the CIA for the current situation with ISIS. DeSantis said : "I was troubled by the President suggesting that somehow this is the CIA's fault, that they had overlooked this....You go back to the beginning of the year when Fallujah fell to ISIS. We knew then that this was something that was very significant. The President is not telling the American people the truth and...going forward he does not have a lot of credibility with members of Congress." DeSantis believes that since Obama has chosen to make Clapper the fall guy, there’s no other option than for the President to fire him. "If it's Clapper's fault and he misses something this big - a lot of us think this is just Obama never taking responsibility for anything himself - but the fact that the President has gone out that far, it seems to me that it would be inconceivable that this would be the guy that you want to go forward with, given that he messed up that bad." DeSantis said it’s disingenuous for Obama to say there will be no American boots on the ground in the war with ISIS. Like House Speaker John Boehner, DeSantis says he’s doubtful airstrikes alone will purge ISIS from the region : "It's important to point out we already have American boots on the ground....they're limited in numbers, but those guys are in harm's way. If your goal is to destroy ISIS, there needs to be a ground force....I've been very skeptical as to whether these Syrian rebels will do the trick. Ultimately, to be able to defeat them you need to hit them from the air and on the ground." Obama hasn’t been upfront either, DeSantis charged, about the total conflict : "When he says we're not at war with ISIS, I don't understand what he means. They beheaded two American citizens so they're clearly at war with us. They are a threat to our security." ~~~~~ Even the New York Times, an Obama supporter, wrote about the White House "misjudging" the powerful threat from ISIS. The Times made a "reconstruction" of the resurgence timeline, and, as we might guess, concluded that the problem was the result of "a number of pivotal moments when both the White House and the intelligence community misjudged the Islamic State," a suggestion rejected by members of Congress, as well as intelligence experts who said Obama was fully warned and aware in 2013 about what was ahead. Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar, told the Times : "To anyone watching developments in Iraq from mid-2010 and Syria from early 2011, the recovery and rise of ISIS should have been starkly clear." A Syrian policy expert told the Times : "Now, as marauding ISIS forces push harder into countries, seizing property, persecuting Christians and selling black market oil to fund their fury, the President has had to rethink the more passive strategy he has favored in handling the region." ~~~~~ Meanwhile, ABC News reported that there are warnings from members of Congress and other leaders, including former and current British prime ministers Tony Blair and David Cameron, that airstrikes will not be enough and a ground game is needed to stop ISIS. Andrew Tabler of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said : "I don’t know if Obama’s fully switched on or not." ~~~~~ Dear readers, it's clear. What did Obama know? That ISIS was a growing threat to Iraq, Syria and America. When did Obama know it? At least in February 2014 when Fellujah fell, but in reality in 2013 when several Intel groups and congressional committees warned him. This is a revelation of character and method that we have never before witnessed in an American President. And the world is watching while America's Intel and military might are dangled by a man whose desire to be President is matched only by his incompetence and duplicity.