Obama Orders Investigation Into Skewing of ISIS Intelligence

Last August, a Pentagon IG announced an investigation into complaints that military officials skewed intelligence assessments about the United States-led campaign in Iraq against the Islamic State to provide a false, pollyannaish narrative about their progress.

In September, the Daily Beast reported that 50 intelligence analysts, tired of seeing their honest assessments about the campaign turned into unrealistic “happy talk,” formally complained that their reports on ISIS were being inappropriately altered by senior officials.

Now in the third week of November, the president has finally told reporters that he is the one who ordered the inquiry into accusations that intelligence reports on ISIS were altered.

No one is more outraged than Obama about this and he wants to get to the bottom of it.

Via the New York Times:

President Obama said on Sunday that he had ordered his senior defense officials to find out whether intelligence reports had been altered to reflect a more optimistic assessment of the American military campaign against the Islamic State.

Speaking at a news conference in Malaysia at the end of a 10-day overseas trip, Mr. Obama said he expected the Pentagon’s inspector general to investigate allegations that significant changes were made to reports from analysts at the United States Central Command, known as Centcom.

“I don’t know what we’ll discover with respect to what was going on in Centcom,” Mr. Obama said. “What I do know is my expectation — which is the highest fidelity to facts, data, the truth.”

Obviously, honesty and transparency have been top priorities for this president — except for his Fast and Furious, Benghazi, Iran, ObamaCare, Solyndra, IRS, VA, NSA, etc., etc., etc., lies.

“One of the things I insisted on the day I walked into the Oval Office was that I don’t want intelligence shaded by politics. I don’t want it shaded by a desire to tell a feel-good story,” Obama said with a straight face.

He added: “I have made it repeatedly clear to all my top national security advisers that I never want them to hold back, even if the intelligence, or their opinions about the intelligence, their analysis or interpretations of the data, contradict current policy.”

What’s not clear is whether Obama actually listens to their intelligence reports.  As investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson told Steve Malzberg last week, Obama apparently refuses to hear about intelligence surrounding certain radical Islamic terror groups.

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters (Ret.) noted in a Fox News interview last month, the president doesn’t view the intelligence community as a tool for national security so much as “a tool of domestic politics.”