Obama's Islamic State Blame Game
President Barack Obama took a shot at the U.S. intelligence community Sunday night when he told CBS News "60 Minutes" that America's spies had "underestimated" the rise of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. It wasn't an entirely inaccurate statement, and as Obama himself noted, his own intelligence chief had made the same point a few weeks ago. But come Monday, U.S. spies were complaining the president had "thrown us under the bus," as one former official put it, by trying to shift the blame for a foreign policy crisis away from the White House and towards the nation's beleaguered intelligence community.
The nation's spies feel that the president is throwing them under the bus -- again.
President Barack Obama took a shot at the U.S. intelligence community Sunday night when he told CBS News "60 Minutes" that America's spies had "underestimated" the rise of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. It wasn't an entirely inaccurate statement, and as Obama himself noted, his own intelligence chief had made the same point a few weeks ago. But come Monday, U.S. spies were complaining the president had "thrown us under the bus," as one former official put it, by trying to shift the blame for a foreign policy crisis away from the White House and towards the nation's beleaguered intelligence community.