Former Obama Intel chief says WH more concerned about reelection than rise of ISIS

(NationalSecurity.news) The former top military intelligence official under President Obama said earlier this week that the White House discarded information that essentially predicted the rise of ISIS in 2011 and 2012 because the information was counterproductive to the president’s reelection narrative, CNN reported.

“I think that they did not meet a narrative the White House needed. And I’ll be very candid with you, they just didn’t,” retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said during an interview with CNN‘s Jake Tapper on “The Lead.”

Flynn has been critical of both Obama and former President George W. Bush’s Iraq war strategy and overall involvement in the Middle East. He noted, however, that Obama was not served well by underlings in a small circle of advisors who were more concerned about crafting a reelection narrative that the president’s efforts in the war on terror had been more effective than they actually were.

The favored narrative, Flynn said, was that pulling troops from Iraq would not leave a power vacuum that could be filled by the rise of radical Islamic groups like ISIS, despite the fact that a number of experts had warned the administration of that likelihood, including the former DIA chief.

“I think the narrative was that al Qaeda was on the run, and (Osama) bin Laden was dead. … They’re dead and these guys are, we’ve beaten them,” Flynn noted, adding that despite the number of terrorist leaders killed, they “continue to just multiply.”

Obama has been roundly critiqued by political opponents and neutral military and national security analysts alike for referring to ISIS as the “JV squad,” in an apparent underestimation of the group’s threat, CNN noted. In addition, the Defense Department inspector general is investigating claims by some that intelligence reports regarding ISIS were manipulated to make the ISIS threat seem diminished.

Obama has been criticized by opponents for referring to ISIS as the “JV squad” and apparently underestimating the group’s threat. The Pentagon’s inspector general is investigating complaints that top intelligence officials manipulated reports to make the threat of ISIS look minimal.

Ironically, just days before the attack in San Bernardino, Calif., that left 14 people dead and 17 wounded, Flynn told Tapper that he believed a Paris-style attack was likely in the U.S. at some point.

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“I really do believe it’s a matter of time, I believe, there’s going to be where our luck is going to run out and they’re are going to be able to achieve something along the lines of what we saw in Paris,” Flynn said.

Flynn has been a regular, and vocal, critic of the Obama and Bush administrations since leaving his post at DIA in 2014. He told the German news outlet Der Spiegel on Sunday that removing Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Moammar Gadhafi in Libya destabilized the region.

“It was huge error. As brutal as Saddam Hussein was, it was a mistake to just eliminate him. The same is true for Moammar Gadhafi and for Libya, which is now a failed state. The historic lesson is that it was a strategic failure to go into Iraq. History will not be and should not be kind with that decision,” Flynn said.

As for battling ISIS, Flynn said there should be the creation of an “Arab NATO” organized among American allies in the region, with divided duties all aimed at taking out ISIS.

“I do believe that there has to be some type of Arab NATO-like structure formed, so there has to be a recognition that the Arab community in that particular region … that gets after this problem,” Flynn said, adding that the U.S. would have to lead the group with support from Russia and Europe.

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