It’s Not A Matter Of Intelligence

On Wednesday, the Center for Security Policy posted an article about the recent offensive in Iraq by State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) terrorists.

The article states:

Some former intelligence officers are blaming this failure on a lack of human intelligence sources in Iraq and an over-reliance on technical intelligence collection.

Congressman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, disagrees. He says the Iraq crisis is a policy and not an intelligence failure.

Rogers says the signs were there about the ISIS threat and the deteriorating situation in Iraq but Obama officials ignored them. He contends that “It was very clear to me years ago that ISIS was pooling up in a dangerous way — building training camps, drawing in jihadists from around the world. We saw all of that happening.”

 What happened in Iraq was to a large extent the result of the failure of America to leave troops there after we declared the war in Iraq. The troops would not have been as much of a military force as a limiting force against the retribution of the Shiite government against the Sunnis who had previously been in power.

The author of the article, Fred Fleitz writes:

 I believe the crisis in Iraq is a major U.S. policy failure due to the Obama administration’s failure to leave a small troop presence behind after the 2011 troop withdrawal and the repeated tendency by Obama officials to discount and downplay the continuing threat from radical Islamist groups. We saw this in September 2012 when Obama officials claimed the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was the result of an anti-Muslim video and not an attack by radical Islamists.

The intelligence oversight committees should review classified analysis on Iraq, Syria, and ISIS produced over the last year to determine whether intelligence agencies failed to provide adequate warning of the ISIS threat. I believe such an inquiry will find that U.S. intelligence analysts provided the Obama administration with excellent analysis about ISIS and the deteriorating situation in Iraq but Obama officials ignored it.

 President Obama’s Middle East policy has been a failure. It is time for him to either listen to the people giving him good advice or find people who will give him good advice.