What’s interesting in the news today?
1. The intelligence community has decided to push back against Obama’s attempts to throw them under the bus for the situation in Iraq.
From TheHill “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.”
“U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal in a report published Monday that American intelligence agencies “often have underestimated the group’s ability to make rapid operational gains.”
An intelligence official, though, pushed back against that characterization, saying that analysts have been closely tracking ISIS and its predecessor, al Qaeda in Iraq, for years.
“Throughout the past year, the Intelligence Community has repeatedly warned that ISIL was on the march, gaining strength and picking up growing Sunni support, while the Iraqi Security Forces looked vulnerable,” the official said, using ISIS’s alternative name, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.”
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2. Obama also now says it wasn’t his decision.
From NationalReview “President Obama refused to take responsibility for the lack of U.S. troops in Iraq, saying that American soldiers had to pull out due to political pressure from Iraqi leaders.
“This issue keeps on coming up as if this was my decision,” Obama retorted when asked if he had any second thoughts, in light of the terrorist force taking over regions of Iraq, about having pulled all American troops out of the country. “The reason that we did not have a follow-on force in Iraq was because a majority of Iraqis did not want U.S. troops there and politically they could not pass the kind of laws that would be required to protect our troops in Iraq,” he said.
A report in The New Yorker showed how President Obama failed to secure the status of forces agreement necessary to leave the troops in place after 2011.”
“When Obama announced the withdrawal, he portrayed it as the culmination of his own strategy.
“After taking office, I announced a new strategy that would end our combat mission in Iraq and remove all of our troops by the end of 2011,” he said. “So today, I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year.”
That’s funny, considering how many times he’s taken credit for it in the past.
Yeah…..
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3. Rioting continued last night in Ferguson, Missouri.
From TheAP ” Police in riot gear fired tear gas to try to disperse a crowd in a St. Louis suburb where an unarmed black teenager had been fatally shot by a police officer over the weekend.
Between two nights of unrest, a community forum hosted by the local NAACP chapter Monday drew hundreds to a sweltering church in Ferguson, the St. Louis suburb where 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot multiple times.”
“Authorities used tear gas and rubber bullets Monday night to try to disperse a crowd at the site of a burned-out convenience store damaged a night earlier, when many businesses were looted. Police said at least five people were arrested.”
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4. Holder has announced a federal investigation into the shooting which set off the riots.
From TheHill “The Justice Department has launched a federal investigation into the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black teenager in a St. Louis suburb over the weekend, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Monday.
The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division will participate in the probe, along with FBI agents from the St. Louis field office and the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Holder said.
“The shooting incident in Ferguson, Missouri, this weekend deserves a fulsome review,” Holder said.
“At every step, we will work with the local investigators, who should be prepared to complete a thorough, fair investigation in their own right. I will continue to receive regular updates on this matter in the coming days.””
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5. And Anonymous is getting in on the act and promising retaliation against Ferguson’s websites.
From KSDK.com “Thousands of threats have been made against the Ferguson Police Department and the city council, and the hacker group Anonymous allegedly took down the city’s internet and phone capabilities.
According to Captain Rick Henke of the Ferguson Police Department, calls have flooded the police station and city hall, with threats being made against the department and city council. No one has specifically been threatened, he said.
The police department conducted morning roll call to inform officers of these latest developments.”
“Henke said the city’s website had been down for several hours. The police and fire department email system was disrupted as well.”
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Wandering Views 
I still have to read up on what happened in Missouri. I’ve heard bits and pieces about the original incident, but still don’t have a clear idea of the scenario. That’s on my personal agenda today.
But if he was unarmed and killed with multiple shots (which is about all that I’ve heard), there certainly does seem to be something amiss on the part of police.
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Donna,
Early reports say the suspect struggled with the officer, and at some point they fell into the car while scuffling. The suspect may or may not have been after the officers weapon, or the in car shotgun. The suspect was a large young man. Deadly force would be acceptable in such a case.
And not to sound callous, but training says you fire until the aggressor is down and the threat removed. He did what he was taught, even if that is upsetting to some. People safely removed can call it overkill, but when it’s your butt on the line…..
I say let the investigation play out. But I’d be really worried if I was the cop since the race-baiters Jesse and Al, along with Holder and his racist DoJ are not gonna be happy if he was justified. They want to prove the opposite. It’s what they do.
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Interesting. This from the NY Times editorial board?
“After President Obama’s truth-challenged oversell of the Affordable Care act, the unconscionable overreach of his CIA and his disastrous indecision on so many foreign policy issues, it’s unnerving to realize that his presidency still has two more years in office….”
Indeed.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2014/08/12/nytimes-the-world-cant-afford-us-govt-this-bad-for-so-long/
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The link embedded in her column, however, is faulty — still trying to verify and find the original piece online.
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Well, I can’t seem to find the original “editorial,” so I have no idea if this was a send-up/tongue-in-cheek post by anchoress or not, sorry.
If it is bogus, well, I hate it when people do that.
Still, I would agree with the sentiments.
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http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/12/us-iraq-security-mideast-insight-idUSKBN0GC1FB20140812
“(Reuters) – Ridiculed at first, the new power which has seized a third of Iraq and triggered the first American air strikes since the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011 – has carved itself a powerful and possibly lasting presence in the Middle East.
The bombing of fighters of the Sunni Islamic State is unlikely to turn around Iraq and its fragmented condition has given the self-proclaimed caliphate the opportunity to establish a hub of jihadism in the heart of the Arab world. …”
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Donna,
http://news.msn.com/us/police-cite-threats-wont-name-cop-who-shot-teen
“Witnesses have said that Brown had his hands raised when the unidentified officer approached with his weapon drawn and repeatedly fired.
Authorities have been vague about what led the officer to open fire, saying only that the shooting — which is being investigated by St. Louis County police — was preceded by a scuffle of some kind with a man in which the officer’s weapon discharged inside a patrol car.
Brown’s parents, who planned to drop their son off at a technical college Monday, have been among those calling for calm. His family also is asking for people to come forward with information or videos related to the shooting. Police have said there is no security or police video of the incident.”
“Dorian Johnson offered a similar account, telling KMOV-TV that he and Brown were walking home from a convenience store when a police officer told them to get out of the street and onto the sidewalk. Johnson said they kept walking, which caused the officer to confront them from his car and again after getting out of the vehicle.”
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