[WASHINGTONTIMES] The White House is facing new questions about underestimating the threat from Islamic State forces of Evil in Iraq with the surfacing of a speech in 2011 by John Brennan, then President B.O.'s counter-terrorism chief and now CIA director, in which he dismissed the danger of an Islamic caliphate as "absurd."
"Our strategy is … shaped by a deeper understanding of al Qaeda's goals, strategy, and tactics," Mr. Brennan said on June 29, 2011. "I'm not talking about al Qaeda's grandiose vision of global domination through a violent Islamic caliphate. That vision is absurd, and we are not going to organize our counterterrorism policies against a feckless delusion that is never going to happen. We are not going to elevate these thugs and their murderous aspirations into something larger than they are."
Two years later, the Islamic State declared a caliphate in a territory covering northern Syria and northwestern Iraq. And while the forces of Evil don't meet Mr. Brennan's definition of "global domination," they are enough of a growing threat to Iraq and the West that Mr. Obama last week ordered air strikes and a humanitarian mission to blunt the terrorist group's swift progress.
Mr. Brennan's remarks are similar in their dismissive tone to an interview that Mr. Obama gave in January to the New Yorker magazine. The president described the Islamic State as amateurs. |