THE FIRST FIBBER – AT 9:18 A.M. ET:  "Sixty Minutes" did its usual softball interview with President Obama last night, further eroding its own brand.  And, as usual, Obama blamed other people for his mistakes in the Mideast.  This time he nailed the intelligence community for underestimating the Islamic State.  Except...it isn't true.  Ace national-security reporter Eli Lake has the story at The Daily Beast: 

On “60 Minutes,” the president faulted his spies for failing to predict the rise of ISIS. There’s one problem with that statement: The intelligence analysts did warn about the group.

Nearly eight months ago, some of President Obama’s senior intelligence officials were already warning that ISIS was on the move. In the beginning of 2014, ISIS fighters had defeated Iraqi forces in Fallujah, leading much of the U.S. intelligence community to assess they would try to take more of Iraq.

But in an interview that aired Sunday evening, the president told 60 Minutes that the rise of the group now proclaiming itself a caliphate in territory between Syria and Iraq caught the U.S. intelligence community off guard. Obama specifically blamed James Clapper, the current director of national intelligence: “Our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that, I think, they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria,” he said.

It's typical of Obama to find someone to blame.  A real leader takes responsibility on himself.  When President Kennedy was asked who was at fault for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, his reply was, "I am the responsible officer of the government."  No such words would pass Barack Obama's lips, for a god never blames himself.

Reached by The Daily Beast after Obama’s interview aired, one former senior Pentagon official who worked closely on the threat posed by Sunni jihadists in Syria and Iraq was flabbergasted. “Either the president doesn’t read the intelligence he’s getting or he’s B.S.ing,” the former official said.

Clapper did tell The Washington Post’s David Ignatius this month that he underestimated the will of the ISIS fighters in Iraq and overestimated the ability of Iraq’s security forces in northern Iraq to counter ISIS. (He also said his analysts warned about the “prowess and capability” of the group.)

Still, other senior intelligence officials have been warning about ISIS for months.

COMMENT:  In the end, Obama winds up fitting the description we've given him here – a glorified town councilman.  Too small for his office. 

September 29,  2014