Daily Alert Archives

U.S. Director of National Intelligence: We Underestimated the Islamic State's "Will to Fight"

(Washington Post) David Ignatius - The U.S. has made the same mistake in evaluating fighters from the Islamic State that it did in Vietnam - underestimating the enemy's will, James Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence, said Wednesday in an interview. "In this case, we underestimated ISIL [the Islamic State] and overestimated the fighting capability of the Iraqi army....I didn't see the collapse of the Iraqi security force in the north coming. I didn't see that. It boils down to predicting the will to fight, which is an imponderable." Clapper said he believed that the Islamic State posed a "strategic threat...long term" to the U.S., given "their actions and their statements about the inevitability of confrontation with the U.S."
2014-09-19 00:00:00
Full Article