Former Dem Rep: ISIS Is A Threat Because Obama Ignored Them

Yesterday, Barack Obama told CBS’s Steve Kroft that it is James Clapper, the current Director of National Intelligence, who is to blame for the rise of ISIS. And today Barack’s version of the truth about how ISIS came to grow into the global security threat that they are, is being blasted by one of his former allies in Congress.

Former Pennsylvania Democratic Congressmen and U.S. Navy three-star admiral Joe Sestak was asked how the intelligence community “got it so wrong” on ISIS.

“I don’t think they did,” he responded.

“If you remember back in January and February, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency actually testified before the House and Senate that in 2014 that ISIS would take over large swaths of territory,” Sestak told MSNBC’s Jose Diaz-Balart. “In fact,” he continued, “at the time he had testified, they had already seized Ramadi and Fallujah, 35 miles from Baghdad. I think it was pretty obvious from his testimony that they had the capability. Even Jim Clapper said that.”

Leaving no confusion about who he thought was to blame for the rise of ISIS, Sestak said it was the Obama administration’s own failure to respond to ISIS that gave them time to grow.  “I think it was slow on the part of the entire administration to assess what they had to do in order address this threat,” Sestak said.

However, Sestak’s assertions should come as no surprise to any honest observer.

It was Barack Obama who opposed the surge in 2007 that essentially won the war in Iraq and left Al-Qaeda decimated. It was Barack Obama who ignored his general’s warnings about the growing threat of ISIS–and then he arrogantly called them a “Jayvee” terrorist group. And it is now Barack Obama who is blaming his subordinates for his own failures.

And as I write, British media are reporting that “Isis fighters are just one mile away from Baghdad as reports emerge of al-Qaeda militants bolstering their ranks in Syria.”

This could have all been mitigated.