Obama Blames Intel Again, Claims They ‘Underestimated’ ISIS On ’60 Minutes’

Steve Kroft interviews President Obama on CBS News for ’60 Minutes’ on Sept. 29, 2014.

In an interview with Steve Kroft Sunday on “60 Minutes,” President Obama blamed U.S. intelligence officials who he claimed “underestimated” the threat posed by the Islamic State, otherwise known as ISIS or ISIL, and overestimated the Iraqi army’s capacity to defeat the militant group.

“Well 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.

Kroft pushed back on the first claim completely and made a respectful attempt to clarify the second. However, neither of President Obama’s claims are completely accurate, nor does this represent the first time the commander-in-chief has thrown a weary intelliegnce community under the bus for his failure to make the correct decision or even a decision at all.

In a move that added to what had already been a strained relationship between U.S. intelligence agencies and the White House, the president blamed bad intel for the failed attempt to rescue American journalist James Foley, an operation that only went public after the White House leaked it to the media with the hopes of stopping the president’s free-falling poll numbers. Just minutes after he made a statement on the beheading of 40-year-old Foley from his vacation at Martha’s Vineyard, Obama could be seen giving high fives at a high-end gulf course with an ear-to-ear grin. When he came under fire for more-than bad optics, the White House leaked the story to the media.

Multiple sources from U.S. intel agencies pushed back on the president’s claim, and stated the threat from ISIS and rise of Islamic radicalism was made perfectly clear to President Obama by members of both the intelligence and defense communities. A report from the West Point counterterrorism center concluded the Obama administration consistently ignored actionable intelligence suggesting the Islamic State was rising over a four-year period, a time period that directly paralleled the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

“ISIL did not suddenly become effective in early June 2014,” the report stated. “It has been steadily strengthening and actively shaping the future operating environment for four years.”

A senior Pentagon official said that President Obama was given “detailed and specific intelligence” regarding the rise of the Islamic State during his daily briefing at least a year before the group began seizing vast amounts of territory in Iraq and Syria over the summer. The dueling reports painted a very dim pictures about the president’s ability to carry out his duties as commander-in-chief, and raised numerous questions surrounding his actions over the past few years.

The president, however, offered a vastly different explanation.

“Well, here’s what happened in Iraq. When we left, we had left them a democracy that was intact, a military that was well equipped, and the ability then to chart their own course,” Obama told Kroft. “And that opportunity was squandered over the course of five years or so because the prime minister, Maliki, was much more interested in consolidating his Shiite base and very suspicious of the Sunnis and the Kurds, who make up the other two-thirds of the country.”

The tension between al-Maliki and the minority populations in Iraq was also not a new development. President George W. Bush dealt with the same dynamic, which is part of the reason why he correctly warned early withdrawal of U.S. troops would thrust Iraq into chaos, a sentiment shared by military commanders in both administrations. The difference was in Bush’s willingness to hold al-Maliki’s hand while ground troops continued to stabilize the baby democracy.

“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.

That was largely the case in Syria, but in an interview following the president’s address to the nation, during which he laid out his strategy for dealing with ISIS, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) blamed his decision to overrule his entire national security team on the issue of arming the moderate Syrian rebels. There is little consensus over whether the Syrian rebels are still moderate or capable, but McCain says arming them now will be “extremely difficult” due to how long the president has waited.

Despite comments made on the very same program just two weeks ago by Leon Panetta — the president’s own former defense secretary — which blamed the president’s decisions for the rise of ISIS, Kroft offered no challenge.

The uncertain Syrian rebels are a group that President Obama on August 8 — just a few short weeks before his speech — disregarded as “an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists, and so forth.” Yet, they are now an intricate plank of Obama’s strategy to defeat the terror army.

In order to sell that strategy and justify failing to seek congressional approval for the air campaigns and arming of shady groups, the White House is attempting to recreate the narrative.

“On the other hand, in terms of immediate threats to the United States, ISIL, Khorasan Group — those folks could kill Americans,” he said.

Andrew C. McCarthy, a former U.S. Attorney and expert in Islamic terrorism, wrote a blistering op-ed over the weekend claiming the president made up the new threat known as the Khorasan Group as an answer for two problems.

“There is a reason that no one had heard of such a group until a nanosecond ago, when the ‘Khorosan Group’ suddenly went from anonymity to the ‘imminent threat’ that became the rationale for an emergency air war there was supposedly no time to ask Congress to authorize,” McCarthy says.

“You haven’t heard of the Khorosan Group because there isn’t one. It is a name the administration came up with, calculating that Khorosan — the –Iranian–​Afghan border region — had sufficient connection to jihadist lore that no one would call the president on it.”

The president did spend his entire first term ending what he perceived to be a threatening U.S. troop presence in the Middle East, while subsequently trying to convince the American people the threat from Islamic terrorism — which he won’t name — has receded.

Now, Obama wants to make it clear to Americans and our enemies that he will not send a major U.S. ground presence beyond the 1,600 American advisers and special operations troops he already has ordered to Iraq, or anywhere else for that matter.

“We are assisting Iraq in a very real battle that’s taking place on their soil, with their troops,” the president said. “This is not America against ISIL. This is America leading the international community to assist a country with whom we have a security partnership.”

Earlier Sunday, House Speaker John Boehner questioned Obama’s strategy to destroy the Islamic State group. Boehner said on ABC’s “This Week” that the U.S. may have “no choice” but to send in American troops if pinprick U.S.-led airstrikes are not enough to ensure Iraqi, Kurdish and rebel Syrian ground forces can defeat ISIS.

“These are barbarians. They intend to kill us,” Boehner said. “And if we don’t destroy them first, we’re going to pay the price.”