Obama says U.S. underestimated threat from Islamic State

WASHINGTON - In an interview with CBS' 60 Minutes, President Obama acknowledged that U.S. intelligence agencies underestimated the threat from Islamic State extremists and overestimated the ability and will of Iraq's army to fight.

Questioning Obama's strategy to destroy the group, House Speaker John Boehner said the U.S. may have "no choice" but to send in American troops if the mix of U.S.-led airstrikes and a ground campaign reliant on Iraqi forces, Kurdish fighters and soon-to-be trained Syrian rebels fails to achieve that goal.

Boehner (R., Ohio), in an interview broadcast Sunday, did agree with the White House that Obama had the power to order airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, but said he believes Congress should consider a resolution authorizing the use of force for this specific mission.

Boehner said he would bring lawmakers back to Washington - they are not set to return until after the Nov. 4 election - if Obama were to seek such a resolution.

Obama described the U.S. intelligence assessments in response to a question during a 60 Minutes interview that was airing Sunday night. He was asked about how Islamic State fighters had come to control so much territory in Syria and Iraq and whether it was a surprise to him.

The president said that during the Iraq war, U.S. military forces with the help of Iraq's Sunni tribes were able to quash al-Qaeda fighters, who went "back underground."

"During the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you have huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of that chaos," Obama said, according to an excerpt release before the show aired.

He noted that his director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has acknowledged that the U.S. "underestimated what had been taking place in Syria." Obama also said it was "absolutely true" that the U.S. overestimated the ability and will of the Iraqi army.

The Obama administration has cited its intelligence weaknesses before.

At an August news conference, he said "there is no doubt" that the Islamic State group's advance "has been more rapid than the intelligence estimates" suggested it would be.

U.S. intelligence agencies, he said, did not have "a full appreciation of the degree to which the Iraqi security forces, when they're far away from Baghdad, did not have the incentive or the capacity to hold ground against an aggressive adversary."

At an intelligence conference this month, National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers expressed regret that his agency had not been "a little stronger" in tracking the Islamic State's shift "from an insurgency to an organization that was now focused on holding ground, territory, the mechanism of governance."

Obama called Syria ground zero for jihadis around the world, and said military force was necessary to shrink their capacity, cut off financing and eliminate the flow of foreign fighters.

He had been less adamant about the threat in the past. In an interview published early this year by the New Yorker, Obama appeared to minimize the Islamic State group militants by comparing it to the junior varsity.

The White House pushed back against Boehner's comments on ABC's This Week about the potential need for American ground troops to confront the militants.

Asked whether he would recommend sending in Americans if no one else was able to step up, Boehner said, "We have no choice. These are barbarians. They intend to kill us. And if we don't destroy them first, we're going to pay the price."

But Obama's deputy national security adviser, Tony Blinken, said the country would not see a repeat of the Iraq war.

"Hundreds of thousands of Americans on the ground in the Middle East getting bogged down, that's exactly what al-Qaeda wants," Blinken said. "That's not what we're going to do."

Also in the 60 Minutes interview, President Obama on gave voice to the conundrum at the heart of his Syria policy, acknowledging that the U.S.-led military campaign against Islamic State and al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria is helping Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, a man the United Nations has accused of war crimes.

"I recognize the contradiction in a contradictory land and a contradictory circumstance," Obama said. "We are not going to stabilize Syria under the rule of Assad [whose government has committed] "terrible atrocities.

"On the other hand, in terms of immediate threats to the United States, [Islamic State], Khorasan Group - those folks could kill Americans."

The Khorasan Group is a cell of militants that the U.S. says is plotting attacks against the West with the Nusra front, Syria's al-Qaeda affiliate. Both have been targeted by U.S. airstrikes; together they constitute the most significant military opposition to Assad.

Obama said his first priority is degrading the extremists who are threatening Iraq and the West. To defeat them, he acknowledged, would require a competent local ground force, something no analyst predicts will surface any time soon in Syria, despite U.S. plans to arm and train "moderate" rebels. The U.S. has said it would not cooperate with the Assad government.

"Right now, we've got a campaign plan that has a strong chance for success in Iraq," the president said. "Syria is a more challenging situation."

Obama, though, made clear he has no interest in a major U.S. ground presence beyond the 1,600 American advisers and special operations troops he already has ordered to Iraq.