Obama, Like George W. Bush, Tries to Blame Bad Intelligence For His Bad Decisions.

George W. Bush tried to blame the intelligence community for a lack of actionable intelligence for the 911 attacks. Except the intelligence community gave him so much specific actionable and urgent intelligence, specifically that the U.S. was going to be hit with an imminent "spectacular" terrorist attack  and the method of attack would involve  the hijacking of U.S. airliners (all without the meta data program) that there isn't a cab driver in New York city who couldn't have prevented 911 with the information that Bush dismissed. Bush did the same when no WMD was found in Iraq, the rationale Bush used  for invading, and then tried to blame "faulty" intelligence as the culprit.

Now Obama is trying to do the same and use the same excuse, citing the possibility that some intelligence reports on Isis may have been altered to present a more optimistic picture about his strategy than was the case which in turn affected his decision making.

This is preposterous and shows the depths Obama is willing to go to escape responsibility for bad decisions. And it's hardly the first time as anyone who is honest and has paid attention to what Obama says well knows.

While Obama says he is looking into the possibility that intelligence reports were intentionally altered to make it look like his strategy was working, just about everyone from outside experts and analysts, members of congress and vacuum cleaner salesmen knew it wasn't. And they didn't need intelligent briefings to figure it out.

This comes from the politician who has a life long well documented history of lying, misrepresenting the truth and fabricating a false reality out of whole cloth for political reasons, more Nixonian in his own way than Nixon but without the 5 o'clock shadow.

Everyone has known Obama's strategy or non-strategy in Syria and against Isis has never been successful. Former Secretary  of Defense and former CIA Director Leon Panetta  spent 10 minutes on CNN talking about Obama's failures with Isis.    Its been criticized as weak, tepid, timid, and half baked. Because it is. So for Obama to blame potentially doctored  intelligence on his decision making is pulling a Bush/Cheney.

Three years ago 3 Secretaries of Defense,a former Secretary of State and CIA Director all advised Obama to arm the moderate Syrian rebels against Isis. He refused and referred to Isis as " the junior varsity". There was no " overly optimistic doctored intelligence" at the time affecting Obama's decision.

A year ago Obama himself admitted in a slip that he didn't have a strategy. That wasn't the result of overly optimistic intelligence estimates either.

And sweetening intelligence estimates for political purposes can cut both ways as intelligence experts have pointed out. It could just as easily come from the White House to let people know what the president wants to hear as being motivated for unknown reasons by an analyst. Either way as a number of intelligence analysts and Panetta pointed out , there has never been any intelligence estimate that justified Obama calling Isis the " junior varsity" 3 years ago . Or that Isis was " contained".

Michael Flynn the former Director of Defense Intelligence all but called Obama a liar in the documentary Blindsided when Obama tried to claim after the rise of Isis that he didn't have adequate intelligence. Flynn pointed out that Obama  was given specific intelligence assessments before he made his infamous and inane " junior varsity " comment that Isis was a  serious  and growing threat that needed to be dealt with. Flynn said," Obama's comment disappointed me".

The Friday morning before the Paris attacks, but after Isis had carried out a bombing in Beirut which killed more than 40 and then downed a Russian airliner killing 224 with a bomb, Obama made the statement that Isis had been contained.

Then came Friday night in Paris.

And Obama's weak, tepid and much criticized comments after the Paris attack . And no his excuse making and lying about doctored intelligence. 

There could be no conceivable reason for anyone to doctor intelligence estimates of success against Isis and it's unlikely anyone did.

The military has been known to do it in the past but their motives was always to use it to lobby for more resources. Because the military always wants more resources. And in those cases tried to use claimed successes as a way to get them.

But against Isis its been the opposite. The military never made optimistic claims of success.  In fact it was the opposite.

It was only a year ago, in Sept and November of 2014 that then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey testified in front of the House Armed Services Committee that the air strikes weren't going to destroy Isis and that the only way to actually destroy Isis was to deploy ground forces and he was prepared to recommend the use of ground troops to Obama.

Dempsey even had Pentagon planners develop a plan of attack and what it would take to do it.  Dempsey testified that it would take 80,000 troops on the ground to destroy the 30,000 Isis fighters.

Dempsey didn't make that assessment because he had faulty doctored intelligence that Obama's strategy was succeeding.

Everyone  has known for three years that what Obama was doing wasn't working.   If he was getting doctored intelligence that claimed success he would've been the only in America who believed them.

 Now Democrats like Dianne Feinstein are revolting and admitting Obama's strategy isn't working, is ineffective and a new approach is needed. Which may be  why Obama is trying to lay the groundwork for  a change in course and do it in Obama fashion by denying he ever made a bad decision or was wrong  by blaming it on  " doctored intelligence".

But, like with George W. Bush, the only intelligence failures in the Obama administration occurred at 1600 Pennsylvania avenue.  In the Oval Office. And with it and Obama's inadequacy, the same kind of lies.