The Hill – 12/01/15 – President Obama ignored early warnings about the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in 2011 and 2012 because it did not fit his reelection “narrative,” according to a former top intelligence leader.
“I think that they did not meet a narrative the White House needed. And I’ll be very candid with you, they just didn’t,” retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said Tuesday on CNN.
“I think the narrative was that al Qaeda was on the run, and [Osama] bin Laden was dead,” he added. “’They’re dead and … we’ve beaten them.’”
The comments are likely to reinforce critics’ allegations that the Obama administration is continually underestimating ISIS, even as its strength seems to grow.
Obama previously compared ISIS to the “JV team,” and more recently claimed that they had been “contained” immediately before an attack on Paris left 130 people dead. The Paris attack is believed to have been directed by ISIS, as part of a change taking the organization’s focus beyond its self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
The Pentagon’s inspector general is also currently investigating claims that intelligence reports about ISIS were selectively edited or glossed over to paint a rosier picture of the U.S. effort against the group. If investigators determine that politics colored American intelligence, the blowback for the Obama administration could be disastrous.
Flynn has been critical of both Obama and former President George W. Bush’s policy for the Middle East since retiring last year, insisting that both men have made major mistakes during their times in office.
In his CNN interview, Flynn warned that the U.S. is ripe to see an attack like the one that ripped through Paris last month.
“I really do believe it’s a matter of time,” he said, “Our luck is going to run out and they are going to be able to achieve something along the lines of what we saw in Paris.”