(source - go read the article)
Everybody knows I have never claimed to be either a Military expert nor a political insider.
However,what is happening across Iraq - and neighbouring countries - is so predictable that even I knew what was inevitable.
From Jihad Watch:
CIA officer: We had no idea ISIL would seize Iraqi cities
June 25, 2014
Robert Spencer
John Maguire doesn’t say it, but another reason why the CIA was completely wrongfooted by the advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was because the Obama Administration has completely deemphasized the jihad threat, and pretended that al Qaeda was the only jihad group. An obscure offshoot of al Qaeda in a country Obama was anxious to forget was not likely to be the object of serious analysis. “CIA OFFICER: We Had No Idea Militants Would Seize Iraqi Cities,” by Ken Dilanian, Associated Press, June 25, 2014
Washington (AP)
When John Maguire was a CIA officer in Beirut in the late 1980s during that country’s bloody civil war, he spent weeks living in safe houses far from the U.S. Embassy, dodging militants who wanted to kidnap and kill Americans.
“We moved all over the city, and we would not sleep in the same place two nights in a row,” Maguire said.
In Iraq in 2014, by contrast, CIA officers have been largely hunkered down in their heavily fortified Baghdad compound since U.S. troops left the country in 2011, current and former officials say, allowing a once-rich network of intelligence sources to wither. Maguire and other current and former U.S. officials say the intelligence pullback is a big reason the U.S. was caught flat footed by the recent offensive by a Sunni-backed al-Qaida-inspired group that has seized a large swath of Iraq.
[...]
The CIA declined immediate comment, but allies in Congress and some former agency officials strenuously dispute the criticism, saying that the intelligence community provided plenty of warning to the Obama administration that the insurgent Islamic State in Iraq and Levant, known as ISIL, could move on Iraqi cities.
“This was not an intelligence failure — this was a policy failure,” said Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican and chairman of the House intelligence committee.
[...]
In the same briefing, the official disclosed that U.S. intelligence did not know who controlled Iraq’s largest oil refinery. And she suggested that one of the biggest sources of intelligence for American analysts is Facebook and Twitter postings….[yes, emphasis mine!]
If that doesn't all blow your mind, go read the rest of this here.
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