Radar

Let me ask you if it's possible in your position to be completely honest and say the rise of the Islamic State surprised you? It took you by surprise, it took the administration by surprise. OBAMA: The ability of ISIL to initiate major land offensives, that was not on my intelligence radar screen. ZAKARIA: Everyone was stunned that a few thousand militants swept through Iraq and Syria sewing fear in the region and the war.GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS (RET), CIA DIRECTOR, 2011-2012: I don't know whether 10,000 troops would have given us the leverage. I actually suspect it might not have but I would have liked to have tested the proposition.OBAMA: The only way in which we were going to keep troops there was at the invitation of that government. And we couldn't get that done.  

Q And finally, when the President told CNN that the strength of ISIL, or ISIS, “wasn’t on his intelligence radar,” was he faulting the intelligence that he was getting or the failure of the intelligence? MR. EARNEST: Well, I’m glad you asked. I know that some have perceived it that way, but the fact is, back in September of 2014, the Director of the Office of National Intelligence, Jim Clapper, told David Ignatius, a writer for the Washington Post “in this case we underestimated ISIL, and overestimated the fighting capability of the Iraqi army.” He continued, “I didn’t see the collapse of the Iraqi security force in the North coming. I didn’t see that.” So the President’s comments to 
Fareed Zakaria for that documentary are consistent with the comments that you heard from the Director of National Intelligence more than two years ago about how difficult it would have been to accurately predict the effectiveness of ISIL on the battlefield and the ineffectiveness of an Iraqi security force that essentially had been hollowed out by the corruption and failed leadership of Prime Minister Maliki. Those are the facts the President discussed in that interview, not for the first time.
Press Briefing 8 December 2016

Asked whether the intelligence community had succeeded in its goal of providing “anticipatory intelligence” about the extremist movement in Syria and Iraq that has declared itself the Islamic State, Clapper said his analysts had reported the group’s emergence and its “prowess and capability,” as well as the “deficiencies” of the Iraqi military. Then he offered a self-critique: “What we didn’t do was predict the will to fight. That’s always a problem. We didn’t do it in Vietnam. We underestimated the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese and overestimated the will of the South Vietnamese. 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.”Washingtonpost Sept 2014

Quando nessuno ci rimette le penne, come invece accadde a Mike Morell per la vicenda di Benghazi, ognuno cerca di tirare l'acqua al proprio mulino.
Il successo di un gruppo terroristico dipende dalla debolezza dello stato in cui opera.
Valutazione che non si può imputare ad un semplice assessment fatto dall'intelligence ma al complesso dei fatti, alla conoscenza del territorio e della sua gente e al governo installato.
Obama può raccontarla come gli pare, ma si è bevuto per anni le bugie raccontate dal governo iracheno mentre continuava a versare quattrini nelle sue casse. Ai tempi di Bush era logico e legittimo incolpare l'esercito e l'intelligence di non aver capito o detto che la guerra del Golfo fu vinta per modo di dire, perchè lasciò scoperti centaia di chilometri di deserto pronti ad accogliere al Qaeda.
Il disastro Isis è il frutto delle politiche americane e anche di una maniera sbagliata di rapportarsi ai governi arabi.