"US splits emerge as Obama admits ISIS threat was misjudged" by Sam Schaffer

"Jim Clapper has acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in Syria," President Obama said in a '60 Minutes' interview Sunday evening. 

In the interview with CBS correspondent Steven Kroft, the President admitted that the government has misjudged the threat posed by the Islamic State. US intelligence departments have failed to realize that ISIS was able to take advantage of the chaotic Syrian Civil War, by using large areas of ungoverned territory to organize themselves from al-Qaeda remnants and sectarian rebel forces. This oversight has resulted in questioning from senators and lawmakers, who wonder if Obama's strategy of indirect involvement will be enough to rid Syria and Iraq of the militant group. 

"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. In addition, he claimed that they had also overestimated Iraq's security forces, who were quickly routed when ISIS captured the city of Mosul this summer.

Because of these errors in judgement, some members of government have partially rejected Obama's policy of indirect involvement, opting instead for a more direct approach with troop deployment if the Iraqis and Kurds cannot hold back the ISIS onslaught. House Speaker John Boehner said on Sunday that if the Iraqi forces aren't trained fast enough to resist ISIS, then deployment of US troops would be required. "Maybe we can get enough of these forces trained and get 'em on the battlefield. But somebody's boots have to be there," he said on ABC's The Week.

I think that the government's misjudgment was pretty bad, and now we'll most likely have to put our boots on Iraqi soil to supplement the local security forces, which have been defeated time after time by the Islamic State. Obama will probably have to retract his 'no boots on the ground' statements, which he has made repeatedly for the last month or so, and send in troops for another prolonged Middle Eastern engagement which will end in half-failure and loss of American lives. Not to say that it's all that surprising though.

Article:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/28/politics/obama-isis-congress/index.html?hpt=hp_t1