Atlas Shrugs
October 1, 2014
 
 
REPORT: President Obama Missed 60% of his Intel  Briefings

 
 
He missed over half of his intel briefings, but he has _no  compunction 
blaming the intel community_ 
(http://pamelageller.com/2014/09/spineless-obama-blames-us-intel-for-his-failures-on-the-rise-of-islamic-state.html/)
  for 
epic failure for the rise of the  Islamic State. The man is void of a single 
moral scruple. 
Because he is so busy…… fundraisers, golf games.....

 
A new _Government Accountability Institute  (GAI)_ (http://www.g-a-i.org/)  
_report reveals_ 
(http://www.g-a-i.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/GAI-Report-PDB-Update-9.29.2014.pdf)
   that President Barack Obama has attended only 
42.1% of his daily intelligence  briefings (known officially as the 
Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB) in the  2,079 days of his presidency through 
September 29, 2014.
 
The GAI report also included a breakdown of Obama’s PDB attendance record  
between terms; he attended 42.4% of his PDBs in his first term and 41.3% in 
his  second. 
The GAI’s alarming findings come on the heels of Obama’s 60 Minutes  
comments on Sunday, wherein the president laid the blame for the Islamic 
State’s  
(ISIS) rapid rise squarely at the feet of his Director of National 
Intelligence  James Clapper. 
“I think our head of the intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has  
acknowledged that I think they underestimated what had been taking place in  
Syria,” 
_said_ 
(http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/09/29/White-House-Everybody-Was-Surprised-By-Rise-of-Islamic-State)
   Obama. 
According to Daily Beast reporter Eli Lake, members of the Defense  
establishment were “flabbergasted” by Obama’s attempt to shift blame. 
“Either the president doesn’t read the intelligence he’s getting or he’s  
bullshitting,” a former senior Pentagon official “who worked closely on 
the  threat posed by Sunni jihadists in Syria and Iraq” told the _Daily  
Beast_ 
(http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/28/why-obama-can-t-say-his-spies-underestimated-isis.html)
 . 
On Monday, others in the intelligence community similarly blasted Obama and 
 said he’s shown longstanding disinterest in receiving live, in-person PDBs 
that  allow the Commander-in-Chief the chance for critical followup, 
feedback,  questions, and the challenging of flawed intelligence assumptions. 
“It’s pretty well-known that the president hasn’t taken in-person  
intelligence briefings with any regularity since the early days of 2009,” an  
Obama 
national security staffer told the _Daily  Mail_ 
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2774122/Obama-accurate-intelligence-ISIS-BEFORE-2012-election-
says-administration-insider.html)  on Monday. “He gets them in writing.” 
The Obama security staffer said the president’s PDBs have contained 
detailed  threat warnings about the Islamic State dating back to before the 
2012  
presidential election. 
“Unless someone very senior has been shredding the president’s daily  
briefings and telling him that the dog ate them, highly accurate predictions  
about ISIL have been showing up in the Oval Office since before the 2012  
election,” the Obama security staffer told the Daily Mail. 
This is not the first time questions have been raised about Obama’s lack of 
 engagement and interest in receiving in-person daily intelligence 
briefings. On  September 10, 2012, the GAI released a similar report showing 
that 
Obama had  attended less than half (43.8%) of his daily intelligence briefings 
up to that  point. When _Washington  Post_ 
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-is-obama-skipping-more-than-half-of-his-daily-intelligence-meetin
gs/2012/09/10/6624afe8-fb49-11e1-b153-218509a954e1_story.html)  columnist 
Marc Thiessen mentioned the GAI’s findings in his  column, then-White House 
Press Secretary _Jay  Carney dubbed the findings “hilarious.”_ 
(http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/09/19/Exclusive-Obama-Reverses-Position-On-Intel-
Briefs-Drops-iPad-For-Live-Meetings)  The very next day, U.S. Libyan  
Ambassador Chris Stevens and three American staff members were murdered in  
Benghazi. As Breitbart News reported at the time, the White House’s very  own 
presidential calendar revealed Obama had not received his daily intel  briefing 
in the _five  consecutive days leading up to the Benghazi attacks_ 
(http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/09/12/Exclusive-Obama-Skipped-Intel-Briefing
s-Week-Before-Embassy-Attacks) . 
Ultimately, as _ABC  News reported_ 
(http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/09/15/Obama-s-Skipped-Intel-Meetings-Now-Under-Scrutiny)
 , the White 
House did not directly dispute the GAI’s numbers  but instead said Obama 
prefers to read his PDB on his iPad instead of receiving  the all-important 
live, in-person briefings. 
Now, with _ISIS  controlling over 35,000 square miles_ 
(http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/09/13/7-ISIS-Facts-Every-American-Should-Know)
  of 
territory in its widening caliphate  in Iraq and Syria, and with Obama pointing 
fingers at his own Director of  National Intelligence James Clapper for the 
rise of ISIS, the question remains  whether a 42% attendance record on daily 
intelligence briefings is good enough  for most Americans

-- 
-- 
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community 
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org

--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to [email protected].
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Reply via email to