US intelligence underestimated ISIS militants says Obama

Washington, DC (IraqiNews.com) On Sunday, US President Barack Obama said on CBS, that the US intelligence agencies underestimated militants in Syria, and conversely, overestimated the ability of Iraqi army to fight ISIS in Iraq.

Obama cited earlier comments by the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper acknowledging that US intelligence underestimated what had been taking place in Syria in the past couple of years.

Islamic militants went underground when US Army quashed al-Qaeda in Iraq with help from Iraq’s troops, Obama said. “But over the past couple of years, during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of that chaos,” he said. “And so this became ground zero for jihadists around the world.”

Noteworthy, the director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, stated for the press earlier in this month, that US intelligence had underestimated Islamic State and overestimated Iraq’s army.