Iraq was stabilized before Obama was installed in 2008. Barky was hellbent on pulling out ASAP, and the intel hierarchy accommodated him.
Reports about terror activity in Iraq have been “grossly thrown to the side” by officials in U.S. Central Command since the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011, according to a former Army official with the command, in an attempt to paint a rosy picture of the coalition’s efforts in the Middle East.
Retired Army Sgt. 1st Class William Kotel told the Washington Examiner that he was pushed out of his position after raising concerns about “missing pieces” in reports for Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East. He had attempted to include in his official reports information about an Iraqi target that had allegedly stolen U.S. money from the Central Bank of Iraq. But the intelligence was stripped from his final report at the behest of his superiors, he said.
Since it was first reported that dozens of intelligence analysts have accused Central Command of downplaying information that suggested terrorist groups such as the Islamic State were making strategic gains, five congressional committees have opened investigations into the matter, on top of a probe by the Pentagon’s inspector general.
Kotel, who was noncommissioned officer in charge of the Joint Targets Enterprise, said warnings about imminent terror attacks in Iraq were required to be routed through a maze of Pentagon channels, a process that could take weeks, instead of communicated directly with military units in harm’s way.
He said the policy of substituting economic or environmental information for terror-related intelligence in reports was never made explicit by Central Command’s leadership, but that he and his colleagues had “implied orders” not to report facts on the ground in Iraq.
The problem, Kotel said, is not necessarily that final reports were being edited for political reasons. Instead, it’s that key intelligence wasn’t allowed in those reports in the first place.
Kotel said it was “really disheartening” when credible intelligence about terror activity was discarded.
“They’ve spent more money and time trying to push down this intelligence … than they have actually spending time and effort on real security,” he said.
……A bipartisan group of lawmakers has urged the Pentagon to conduct an anonymous survey of intelligence analysts throughout the Defense Department to get a sense of the political pressures those analysts might face.
……Because some of the whistleblowers who raised concerns about the intelligence reports are from the Army, the congressman is concerned that the military branch could discover the identities of analysts who alerted the inspector general to the tainted intelligence reports and attempt to take action against them.
More on the whistleblowers, HERE.
Intelligence officials never “underestimated the threat posed by the Islamic State and overestimated the Iraqi army’s capacity to defeat the militant group.” They gave Barack Numbnuts Obama detailed and specific intelligence about the rise of ISIS as part of his daily briefing for at least a year before the group started its rampage.
The only intelligence failure is his.
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