In last Saturday's news conference, President Obama blamed bad "intelligence estimates" for failing to react to the rise of ISIS in Iraq. He, himself, actually referred to ISIS as the "junior varsity" of al-Qaeda. As you can imagine, this is not sitting well with members of the intelligence community. The Hill: The U.S. intelligence community Monday pushed back at reports that the White House was not warned about the growing strength of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) ahead of the group’s recent offensive. “The job of the Intelligence Community is to warn. We did that," said a U.S. intelligence official. "In short, this was not U.S. intelligence failure. It was an Iraqi military failure.” ADVERTISEMENT Reports suggested that the White House was caught off-guard last week by the Islamic State’s rapid advance on Erbil, a city in northern Iraq where the U.S. has a consulate and joint...(Read Full Post)