A former top military official to President Obama said Tuesday that the White House overlooked reports that warned about the growth of the Islamic State because it complicated the administration’s re-election “narrative.”
“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, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told CNN.
Flynn described an administration that was more concerned with the president’s image and ensuring Americans had no reason to believe pulling U.S. troops from Iraq made the region vulnerable to other extremist groups. They purposely reemphasized Osama bin Laden’s death and al Qaeda’s fleeting presence in the country.
“I think the narrative was that al Qaeda was on the run, and bin Laden was dead … they’re dead and these guys are, we’ve beaten them,” Flynn said.
The White House’s downplaying of Pentagon intelligence may have also contributed to Obama’s downplaying the terrorism group after he won a second term, including his 2014 reference to them as the “JV squad.” The inspector general of the Pentagon is investigating whether reports from intelligence officials were manipulated before they reached the president.
