Obama’s Bid To Blame Intelligence Chief For Inaction On ISIS Backfires: McCain Asks Obama To Admit Own Mistakes

President Obama's bid to blame the National Intelligence chief James Clapper for the delay in American action on ISIS seems to be backfiring on the President himself. Obama's comment that intel "underestimated" the threat of Islamic State came during his "60 Minutes" interview, reported Fox news. The comment is now drawing flak and visceral criticism of Obama from senior lawmakers and experts from the intelligence community.

Mr Obama, already facing low foreign policy approval ratings from 60 per cent of Americans, is now feeling cornered, reported the Telegraph. Obama blamed the intelligence in answer to a specific question as to how the Islamic State gained so much of territory in Iraq and Syria. Obama replied that his head of intelligence, Jim Clapper, had already acknowledged that they "underestimated" what was happening in Syria.

But new disclosures contradict this estimate and shows Clapper was not at fault. He used to update the White House on the threat posed by Islamic State, time to time. What went wrong with team Obama was they "overestimated" the ability of Iraqi army to fight the ISIS. In fact the intelligence community claimed to have "pushed hard" a proposal to identify the leadership of ISIS and other groups so that they can target them. But those options to president's team were not heeded at all.

In a damage control exercise, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest in his Monday's briefing tried to defend Obama saying the President never intended to blame the intelligence community.

Obama's Mistake

Peter King, a Republican law maker questioned the president's comments. He told MSNBC that he himself was aware of the threat of ISIS in the summer of 2013. But Obama "dropped the ball" and is trying to blame others, King alleged. Republican Senator John McCain told CNN caustically that he was "puzzled" by some statements of the President. He said Obama should follow other presidents and own up the mistakes. He noted that every US president had made a mistake. But they all acknowledged it and moved on. President Reagan had Iran contra, Clinton had Bosnia, George W Bush had problem in Iraq. But that does not seem to be in this president's DNA, McCain quipped. In McCain view, the ISIS rise was the result of Obama's failure to leave a residual force in Iraq.

Maliki Blamed

While discussing Iraq, Obama told "60 Minutes" that when the U.S. left Iraq, its democracy was intact and Iraqis had the ability to chart their own course. But he blamed then Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for wasting that opportunity by trying to consolidate his Shia base and for alienating Sunnis and Kurds who made up rest of the country.