Obama: US Underestimated Rise of ISIS

[101ABN]

President Obama acknowledged that the U.S. underestimated the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also called ISIL) and overestimated the ability of the Iraqi military to fend off the militant group in an interview that will air Sunday on 60 Minutes.

The president was asked by 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft about comments from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who has said the U.S. not only underestimated ISIS, it also overestimated the ability and will of the Iraqi military to fight the extremist group.

"That's true," Mr. Obama said. "That's absolutely true."


www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-u-s-underestimated-rise-of-isis-in-iraq-and-syria/


No shit, Sherlock...

[Sailor]

The Islamic State group is allegedly closing in on Baghdad, according to a report from a vicar at Iraq’s only Anglican church that claims the jihadists formerly known as ISIS are roughly one mile away from the Iraqi capital. Airstrikes against ISIS targets were supposed to stop the group from taking Baghdad.

“The Islamic State are now less than 2km (1.2 miles) away from entering Baghdad. They said it could never happen and now it almost has,” Canon Andrew White of the Foundation for Relief and Reconciliation in the Middle East, a British-based charity that supports Iraq’s only Anglican church in Baghdad, said on his Facebook page early Monday morning. “Obama says he overestimated what the Iraqi Army could do. Well, you only need to be here a very short while to know they can do very, very little.”

The Christian aid group was referring to the U.S. president’s interview Sunday night on “60 Minutes,” the CBS news magazine show, where Obama conceded that his administration underestimated the ascendancy of ISIS. More than 1,000 Iraqi troops were reportedly killed Sunday in clashes with ISIS about 10 miles outside of Baghdad.

uk.news.yahoo.com/isis-slaughter-hundreds-iraqi-army-saqlawiyah-baghdad-failed-124546121.html#uPEKuxL

From the pattern the airstrikes have been taking, it's clear that some ISIS units have been identified between Baghdad and the Kuwait border.

Methinks it's time to get our people out of Baghdad before all overland lines of communication are severed. The numbers of MANPADS ISIS captured in Syria and from the Iraqi's themselves mean that flights in and out of Baghdad are going to be clay pidgeons very soon, just my analysis. I pray I'm wrong but don't think I am.

I also think it's past time to start manning up whatever equipment we have stored in Kuwait and Saudi, either to fight or to keep it out of ISIS' hands.