Pentagon Struggles To Downplay Disclosure Of ISIS War Plan - 0 views
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It could hardly have been a more perfect storm, and it was all because of a single question in a routine briefing.On Feb. 19, U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for military operations in the Middle East, gave reporters a standard background briefing about the ongoing campaign against the Islamic State. The official who conducted the briefing responded to one question with a discussion of a particularly sensitive part of the campaign: the U.S.-led coalition’s plans to take back Mosul, a key Iraqi city that the Islamic State captured in a shocking victory last summer. The official indicated that 20,000 or more Iraqi troops would ideally start the Mosul offensive in April 2015.Within hours, headlines were screaming with the apparently sensitive information CENTCOM had released. Opponents of the Obama administration screamed too. “Never in our memory," hawkish Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) wrote to President Barack Obama the day after the briefing, "can we recall an instance in which our military has knowingly briefed our own war plans to our enemies.”
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And almost immediately, the notoriously leak-phobic Obama administration entered damage control mode. The White House said it could not confirm the comments, instead punting the question to the Department of Defense. Meanwhile, hours after the briefing, newly confirmed Secretary of Defense Ash Carter refused to address the specifics, even though they had already been provided to reporters. Asked about the timing of the Mosul offensive, Carter said, “Even if I knew exactly when that was going to be, I wouldn’t tell you."To make matters worse, the two U.S. partners who are essential to the plan's success -- the Iraqi government and the Iraqi Kurds -- seemed equally perturbed. Iraq's government issued a protest over the revelation, and the Kurdish region's representative to the U.S., Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, said on Thursday that her government was "surprised" by the announcement.Neatly wrapped in newsprint, a little scandal had landed in the laps of skeptics who have long questioned the White House's strategy to combat the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. After a week of mixed messaging from all corners of the Obama administration, the Pentagon indicated late on Friday that the attack is likely to come in the fall. The announcement leaves last Thursday's briefing seeming even more puzzling and the White House’s strategy looking even clumsier and more disorganized.
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The ongoing confusion about who knew of the Mosul details and who approved their release has given critics two equally powerful lines of attack: first, that officials are careless enough to release details of war strategy that could prove helpful to U.S. enemies; and second, that the administration can’t even coordinate the release of its own sensitive information.