Islamic State's Rapid Growth Caught U.S. By Surprise -- L.A. Times
As Islamic State fighters from Syria blitzed across northern Iraq this summer, they swept thousands of fresh recruits from Iraqi Sunni tribal militias, prisons and insurgent groups into their ranks, nearly tripling the size of their armed force and catching U.S. authorities by surprise, U.S. intelligence officials said Friday.
Dismantling the lethal new alliances in Iraq will be a key focus as the Obama administration scrambles to push back the fast-growing extremist army, which has achieved major military gains, shows sophisticated command and control, and is exceedingly well-funded, the intelligence officials said.
In coming days, the U.S. military "will be more aggressive and shift a focus from what has been, to date, primarily defensive in nature to offensive in nature," said Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary.
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My Comment: The spin-masters are already trying their best to paint the CIA as clueless in understanding the growth and threat of the Islamic State .... ISIS can 'muster' between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters, CIA says (CNN). But this blog .... and news organizations .... have been consistent in documenting and explaining the growth of ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State for the past year .... information that I am sure that the CIA and other relevant U.S. intelligence agencies had .... if not in more detail.
I contend that the ones who should be blamed for being caught by surprise is the White House and Congress. Congress should have asked the hard-nosed questions on what was happening .... they did not. And the White House .... either they denied the threat was real (after-all they have been claiming for the past two years that Al Qaeda and its affiliate groups were on the run) .... or they choose to willfully (starting from the President on down) to ignore the threat. Either way .... the Islamic State has had a "free-pass" from the U.S. for the past year .... and everyone is now paying the price for it.