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Obama Says U.S. Underestimated the Rise of ISIS Obama Acknowledges U.S. Erred in Assessing ISIS
(about 5 hours later)
WASHINGTON — President Obama acknowledges in an interview to be broadcast Sunday night that the United States underestimated the rise of the Islamic State militant group while placing too much trust in the Iraqi military, allowing the region to become “ground zero for jihadists around the world.” WASHINGTON — President Obama acknowledged in an interview broadcast on Sunday that the United States had underestimated the rise of the Islamic State militant group, which has seized control of a broad swath of territory in the Middle East, and had placed too much trust in the Iraqi military, allowing the region to become “ground zero for jihadists around the world.”
In some of his most candid public remarks on the subject, Mr. Obama says in the interview with the CBS News program “60 Minutes” that it was “absolutely true” that the United States had erred in its assessments of both the Islamic State — also known as ISIS or ISIL — and the Iraqi military. Reflecting on how a president who wanted to disentangle the United States from wars in the Middle East ended up redeploying to Iraq and last week expanding air operations into Syria, Mr. Obama pointed to assessments by the intelligence agencies that said they were surprised by the rapid advances made in both countries by the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
And while describing a range of measures to sharpen military pressure on the extremists, he said that, ultimately, a political outcome was necessary to ease frictions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims “in Iraq and Syria, in particular.” “Our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that, I think, they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” Mr. Obama said on “60 Minutes,” the CBS News program, referring to James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence. Mr. Obama added that the agencies had overestimated the ability and will of the Iraqi Army to fight such Sunni extremists. “That’s true. That’s absolutely true,” he said.
A political solution there might help ease the broader tensions between the populations that “are the biggest cause of conflict, not just in the Middle East, but in the world,” Mr. Obama said, according to excerpts from the president’s interview with Steve Kroft on the CBS News website. But he rebutted critics who say his refusal to intervene more directly in the Syrian civil war and his decision to pull all American troops out of Iraq in 2011 had created conditions that allowed the rise of the Islamic State. Instead, he pointed the finger at Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, until recently the prime minister of Iraq. “When we left, we had left them a democracy that was intact; a military that was well-equipped; and the ability then to chart their own course,” Mr. Obama said. “And that opportunity was squandered over the course of five years or so because the prime minister, Maliki, was much more interested in consolidating his Shia base.”
The president’s comments came as warplanes from the United States and allied Arab countries continued airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria, including some in a besieged Kurdish area of Syria near Turkey, in a campaign that the administration has said could take years. By contrast, he praised Mr. Maliki’s newly installed successor, Haider al-Abadi, whom he met in New York last week, for assembling a more inclusive government that may undercut Sunni support for the Islamic State. Mr. Abadi “so far at least has sent all the right signals,” Mr. Obama said. “We can’t do this for them.”
The House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, suggested on Sunday that the airstrike campaign might not be enough to contain and then destroy ISIS, and that American ground forces might ultimately have to be deployed. But he was measured in that assessment, saying there had been “some progress” by the new Baghdad government. “I wouldn’t say great yet,” he said.
“These are barbarians,” Mr. Boehner told George Stephanopoulos on the ABC News program “This Week.” “They intend to kill us. And if we don’t destroy them first, we’re going to pay the price.” Mr. Obama conceded that his strategy would be less likely to succeed in Syria, where he is working at odds with the government rather than in tandem. Mr. Obama has called for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to step down, but now the two share an enemy in the Islamic State. The United States’ plan relies on trying to build up a separate rebel force that can take on both Mr. Assad’s government and the Islamic State, but Mr. Obama dismissed as “mythology” the notion that he should have done that two years ago.
Mr. Stephanopoulos asked, “If no one else will step up, would you recommend putting American boots on the ground?” “We’ve got a campaign plan that has a strong chance for success in Iraq,” he said. “I think Syria is a more challenging situation.”
“We have no choice,” said Mr. Boehner, who previously said only that “somebody’s boots have to be on the ground.” The House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, suggested on Sunday that airstrikes might not be enough and that American ground forces might ultimately have to be deployed. “These are barbarians,” Mr. Boehner said on the ABC News program “This Week.” “They intend to kill us. And if we don’t destroy them first, we’re going to pay the price.” Asked if he would recommend sending American ground troops if no other country would do it, Mr. Boehner said, “We have no choice.”
Mr. Obama, in the “60 Minutes” interview transcript, reiterates his opposition to deploying any significant number of American ground forces. Mr. Boehner also said that while he believes Mr. Obama has the authority to conduct airstrikes without additional permission from Congress, he would summon lawmakers back to Washington from a recess to vote if the president asked him to. “I’d bring the Congress back,” he said.
“We just have to push them back, and shrink their space, and go after their command and control, and their capacity, and their weapons, and their fueling, and cut off their financing, and work to eliminate the flow of foreign fighters,” Mr. Obama said. Speaking on another news show, “Face the Nation” on CBS, Senator Timothy Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, pressed his opinion that the president needs congressional permission and accused Mr. Obama, a close ally, of inconsistency. “It really concerns me that the president would assert he has the ability to do this unilaterally when as a candidate for president he made very plain that the president cannot unilaterally start a war without Congress,” Mr. Kaine said.
The United States, along with most other Western countries, was taken aback by the rapid advances of ISIS as it seized control of sizable territory in Syria and Iraq. Mr. Obama said that the chaos of the Syrian civil war had been a key factor. American intelligence agencies were still trying to determine whether airstrikes in Syria had killed the leader of a separate network affiliated with Al Qaeda called the Khorasan Group. The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist social media sites, reported on Sunday that a Qaeda-associated Twitter account declared that Mohsin al-Fadhli, the Khorasan leader, had died.
“Essentially what happened with ISIL was that you had Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was a vicious group, but our Marines were able to quash with the help of Sunni tribes,” he says in the “60 Minutes” transcript. American officials said they believed that a senior Khorasan figure had been killed but were not sure whether it was Mr. Fadhli or Abu Yusef al-Turki. They were hopeful that both had been killed, but added that it was unlikely. An intelligence report distributed at the White House on Sunday said that there were indications that Mr. Fadhli had been killed, but that they were not conclusive. Officials said they worried the Twitter reports were part of a disinformation campaign to throw off the Americans.
“They went back underground,” he adds, “but over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you had huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of that chaos.”  “We can’t confirm it,” Antony J. Blinken, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Obama, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “We’re obviously trying to dig into this, get confirmation. We want to make sure that he’s not trying to, in effect, fake his death and go underground. But there are serious indicators that he was removed.”
As the group attracted foreign fighters from many countries, Mr. Obama said, “this became ground zero for jihadists around the world.”
Even as attention focused on the Islamic State, United States intelligence agencies were still trying to determine whether the initial wave of airstrikes in Syria killed the leader of a separate network affiliated with Al Qaeda called the Khorasan Group. The SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist social media sites, reported on Sunday that a Qaeda-associated Twitter account declared that Mohsin al-Fadhli, the Khorasan leader, had died.
American officials said they believed that a senior Khorasan figure had been killed but were not sure whether it was Mr. Fadhli or Abu Yusef al-Turki. They were hopeful that both had been hit, but added that it was unlikely both were killed.
An intelligence report distributed at the White House on Sunday said there were indications beyond the Twitter traffic that Mr. Fadhli had been killed but not enough to be conclusive. Officials said they worried that the Twitter reports were part of a disinformation campaign to throw off the Americans.
Anthony Blinken, the deputy national security adviser, was asked about the reports on “Fox News Sunday.”
“We can’t confirm it,” Mr. Blinken said. “We’re obviously trying to dig into this, get confirmation; we want to make sure that he’s not trying to, in effect, fake his death and go underground, but there are serious indicators that he was removed.
“It would be significant, he’s a significant leader of the ISIL effort and, in terms of taking away some of their command and control, their leadership, the direction that they have, it would be significant.”