In a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies yesterday, CIA director John Brennan made a startling admission: The Islamic State was “decimated” under George W. Bush and had just “700-or-so adherents left” following the surge in Iraq. Said Brennan:
[ISIS] was, you know, pretty much decimated when US forces were there in Iraq. It had maybe 700-or-so adherents left. And then it grew quite a bit in the last several years, when it split then from al-Qaida in Syria, and set up its own organization.
US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan addresses a conference on national security in Washington October 27, 2015. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas.
But in September 2014, a CIA analysis found that:
[ISIS] can muster between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters across Iraq and Syria … This new total reflects an increase in members because of stronger recruitment since June following battlefield successes and the declaration of a caliphate, greater battlefield activity, and additional intelligence.
This means that, by the CIA’s own estimate, ISIS has grown on President Obama’s watch from just 700 fighters to between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters.
That is an increase of between 2,700 and 4,400 %.
Moreover, Brennan tacitly acknowledged that the Obama administration had underestimated the ISIS threat. At CSIS, Brennan declared that:
Not content to limiting its killing fields to Iraqi and Syrian lands, and to setting up local franchises in other countries of the Middle East, South Asia and Africa, ISIL has developed an external operations agenda that is now implementing … with lethal effect.
http://www.aei.org/publication/bren...grown-under-obama-by-as-much-as-4400-percent/
CIA director Brennan admits ISIS was “decimated” under Bush, but has grown as much as 4,400% under O
Discussion in 'News & Current Events' started by Revmitchell, Nov 19, 2015.
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Revmitchell Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
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America's Five Biggest Foreign-Policy Fiascoes
http://nationalinterest.org/feature...icas-five-biggest-foreign-policy-11160?page=3
"Greatest Fiasco: The Invasion of Iraq, 2003. On the question of whether this was a discretionary initiative, there can be no longer any real debate. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction, nor did he have any serious connection to Islamist fundamentalists such as those who had attacked the American homeland on September 11, 2001. In other words, he was not the enemy. And, when his rule was upended and his country destroyed, it was inevitable that jihadist Islam would exploit the resulting chaos.
And it isn’t simply Iraq that has slipped into chaos and posed opportunity for the real enemy, which is Islamist radicals bent on attacking the West whenever and wherever possible. It seems clear that the so-called Arab Spring emerged in part from inspiration derived from events in Iraq, which nurtured confidence among many elements of Islam that change was possible. Unfortunately for many, the change that has unfolded hasn’t contributed to regional stability, let alone anything approaching the democracy envisioned by the architects of the Bush invasion. And so now we have ISIS on the march, established in significant expanses of territory in Syria and Iraq. Dealing with that problem—a problem of the real enemy—will now draw America further into the maw. The cost has been immense, and unfortunately it is just beginning."
Or military industrialist Cheney. Has he ever acknowledged his gross errors?:
Who Is More Responsible for the Rise of ISIS? Bush or Obama?
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/who-more-responsible-the-rise-isis-bush-or-obama-11296?page=2
"Cheney was wrong to support the invasion of Iraq in 2003. He was irresponsibly wrong when he assured the nation, without serious evidence, that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. He was wrong to argue that Saddam was in alignment with Al Qaeda leaders. He was wrong when he assured the American people that U.S. forces would be greeted as liberators rather than invaders. He was wrong to think that Western-style democracy could be planted upon the soil of a culture that contains doctrinal objections to significant elements of Western-style democracy. He was wrong to miss the implications of destroying the balance of power between Iraq and Iran. He was wrong not to see the consequences of the ongoing societal chaos in Iraq that would be unleashed by the invasion." -
Crabtownboy Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
When you continue a failed policy that created ISIS one of the main things that happens is it makes ISIS stronger and makes it easier to attract new recruits. Note the quote is from Judicial Watch, a conservative public interest firm.
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Revmitchell Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
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Revmitchell Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
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Obama admits administration got it wrong on ISIS. That’s a good thing. 09-29-2014
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...d-he-got-it-wrong-on-isis-thats-a-good-thing/ -
Revmitchell Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
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"Despite calls from some Republicans to send tens of thousands of troops to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria, Obama argued that the U.S. experience after the Iraq war showed the flaws of such an approach."
Thank God! A cool head that's not going to be panicked into yet another debacle in the Levant!
Let France or Russia or whoever send 'tens of thousands of troops' in there this time around. We'll support them. -
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Revmitchell Well-Known MemberSite Supporter
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This is a small sample of the information CIA director John Brennan left out of his speech.
Circa 2007 . . .
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/03/05/the-redirection
ISIS = Western backed Sunni extremists. Facts do matter folks. -
There will be no rest until somebody in the GOP gets a war. It's a lot of money. -
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That is, the gates of hell have been opened by Washington’s senseless destruction of regimes in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and elsewhere that refused to do its bidding. Yet not one of these backwaters of tyranny and economic and military insignificance posed any threat whatsoever to the safety and security of American citizens in Lincoln NE or Manchester NH.
That the middle east and the Arab/Islamic world in particular is now a burned out zone of failed states and an incubator of barbaric religious and sectarian fanaticism is because Imperial Washington made it that way.
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/blowback-the-washington-war-partys-folly-comes-home-to-roost/
This isn't a Bush vs Obama, democrat vs republican, left vs right thing folks. It's neocon (PNAC) lunacy reaping what it sowed. -
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Really all one has to do is unscrew the top of one's head and pour out all the crap the government and corporate media has filled it with and calmly examine all the facts. -
THIS needs to be a 15 second commercial being run on continuous loop on every station in America.
Succinct and right to the point. So good I'm making it my siggy till everyone gets to see it. -