[courtesy Google Images]
th60 MinutesUS intelligenceAlmost instantly, the US “intelligence community” reacted.
On Monday, September 29th, The Washington Times posted “U.S. intel disputes Obama claim on Islamic State”. According to that article,
“U.S. policy leaders, including President Obama, were repeatedly warned for more than a year by the U.S. intelligence community that the Islamic State terror group was gaining significant strength in Syria and was on the verge of seizing territory deep inside Iraq, where the military was struggling to respond.
“The private [and unidentified] assessments, which were confirmed to The Washington Times on Monday, conflict with Mr. Obama’s claim on national television over the weekend that America’s spies had underestimated the rise and capabilities of the Islamic State and had overestimated the Iraqi military’s ability and will to fight the group.
On Sunday, President Obama publicly claimed that the US intelligence community had underestimated the threat posed by ISIS and the ability of the Iraqi military to resist that threat.
On Monday, a number of unidentified sources in the US intelligence community denied President Obama’s claim and provided evidence that the intelligence community had repeatedly warned the President and/or other high officials of the threat posed by ISIS since June of A.D. 2013.
The fact that President Obama and/or other high officials had failed to heed the intelligence community’s repeated warnings is not the big story here.
The big story is that, 1) the unidentified sources who’ve expressly exposed President Obama’s failure to heed warnings about ISIS are identified by The Washington Times as members of the US “intelligence community” (probably from the CIA, NSA, Military intelligence or congressional intelligence oversight committees); 2) US intelligence is not merely refuting President Obama’s attempt to blame the intelligence community for his administration’s failure to deal with ISIS at an earlier date—the intelligence community implicitly calling President Obama a liar; and, worse, 3) did so in public.
Conflicts of the sort we’re seeing between the President and US intelligence community might be virulent behind closed doors—but normally, such conflicts would never be revealed to the public.
In this case, however, it appears that unnamed elements of the US intelligence community have gone public with implicit allegations that 1) the President’s initial response to warnings about ISIS was, at best, incompetent; and, 2) his recent attempts to blame the intelligence community for that incompetent response are lies.
Thus, the big story is the fact that the normally clandestine intelligence community which normally “sez nuthin’ ‘bout nuthin’ to nobody” is publicly calling the Commander in Chief a liar.
• That public response isn’t likely to have been the result of the single instance Obama’s false claims on 60 Minutes.
Instead, the public response by the “intelligence community” implies that either:
1) There’s been a long-simmering antagonism between President Obama and the intelligence community and the President’s claims on 60 Minutes were the straws that broke the camel’s back; or
2) There are forces at work who, having gotten rid of former Attorney General Eric Holder, are now gearing up to impeach President Obama or otherwise force him to resign.
The intelligence community’s implied, public claims that President Obama is lying is evidence that Obama has not only lost the respect of much of the government, he’s lost their loyalty and also lost control over important elements of the government.
Obama isn’t merely a “lame duck”—he is increasingly a “dead duck”.
• More, there appears to be a growing faction within the government who are as incensed by President Obama’s anti-American policies as I am and some of my readers may be. I.e., there may be some good men and women in government who actually care more about this country than their jobs and their pensions. There may be some good men and women in government who, increasingly, side with the ideas espoused by people like myself and many of my readers.
Obama is due to serve as President until January of A.D. 2017.
I’m beginning to think that he’s not going to hold his office that long.
I’m beginning to think that forces are at work who may cause Obama to emulate another pathological liar named “Richard Milhous Nixon” who, faced with the threat of impeachment, resigned in disgrace from the Presidency.