No Shit Sunday: Obama Says U.S. Underestimated Strength of Militants in Syria

In a 60 Minutes interview set
to air on CBS tonight, President Obama admitted the U.S. was caught
off guard by the situation in the Syrian civil war,” which had
turned the country into a “ground zero for jihadists,” and the rise
of groups like what became ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and
Syria.

Via CBS News:

The president was asked by 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft
about comments from Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper, who has said the U.S. not only underestimated ISIS, it
also overestimated the ability and will of the Iraqi military to
fight the extremist group.

“That’s true,” Mr. Obama said. “That’s absolutely true.”

“Jim Clappper has acknowledged that I think they underestimated
what had been taking place in Syria,” he said, blaming the
instability of the Syrian civil war for giving extremists
space to thrive.

Iraq has been warning about
Al-Qaeda militants in Syria for
years, identifying as early as late 2011 that Al Qaeda
militants that had flooded into Iraq from Syria during the U.S.
Iraq War in the 2000s were now crossing the border the other way
around. The Syrian regime has considered their civil war a
counter-terrorism campaign since the first peaceful protests in
January 2011.