At his daily press briefing Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told skeptical reporters that despite some “setbacks,” the U.S.-led coalition to defeat ISIS has been a success overall.
ABC News White House correspondent Jonathan Karl had questioned Earnest about the administration’s assessment of their overall track record in Iraq.
“You said, ‘we’ve seen periods of progress an success.’ Would you say that overall it’s been a success?” Karl asked.
Josh Earnest answered, “yeah – overall yes. Doesn’t mean there haven’t been areas of setbacks as we saw in Ramadi….”
But Karl stopped him right there: “Exporting terror to Libya? Taking over the capital of Iraq’s largest province? This is overall a success?”
Earnest took this as a cue to talk up Obama’s vaunted 60 nation coalition.
“What we’ve also seen is – we’ve seen a coalition of 60 nations within the region and around the world which has joined the United States in this fight. We’ve seen a new prime minister take office in Iraq and unite that country….”
Video via the Washington Free Beacon:
It’s even worse than we thought if the White House press secretary can’t cite a single success story in Iraq other than Obama’s fake coalition and (arguably) an improvement in the political situation.
Last night on Fox News, Bill O’Reilly suggested that Obama authorized the raid on ISIS oil financier Abu Sayyaf in Syria over the weekend to mitigate the coalition’s failure to stop ISIS.
Bill O’Reilly asked his guests, Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (ret) and Col. David Hunt (Ret.) Monday night, if they’ve heard the same rumor he’d heard that “the Obama administration knew that Ramadi was going to fall, knew it was an embarrassment, and then okayed this mission (as Col Hunt mentioned there were more than one hundred other requests that were not okayed – to take the sting out of the Ramadi situation.”
Peters said, “I’ve not heard that direct link, but I have heard the administration is doing everything it can to do damage control on the fall of Ramadi.”
Obama has tasked White House Press Sec. Josh Earnest, Brig. Gen. Thomas D. Weidley, and White House spokesman Eric Schultz with damage control duty — and one after another, they’re looking like even sadder versions of Baghdad Bob.
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