What's Going On with that 'Terrorist Threat to U.S. Subways'?

There appear to be some he said/she said going on with respect to Iraq, ISIS and terrorism.

A wide range of U.S. intelligence sources told NBC News that there is no evidence of any current threat against the subways, after Iraq’s prime minister told reporters that ISIS is plotting an imminent attack.

In a meeting with journalists at the United Nations, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said he had just learned of the plot by foreign fighters of the Islamic State group in Iraq to attack subway systems in the U.S. and Paris. He said it had not been thwarted and that the United States had been alerted.

“Today, while I’m here I’m receiving accurate reports from Baghdad that there were arrests of a few elements and there were networks from inside Iraq to have attacks … on metros of Paris and U.S.,” al-Abadi said, speaking in English, according to the Associated Press. “They are not Iraqis. Some of them are French, some of them are Americans. But they are in Iraq.”

The Obama administration was quick to knock all of that down, denying that Iraq had alerted us, and denying any knowledge of an imminent threat.

But that’s what the Obama administration always does, isn’t it? This is the administration that still describes Nidal Hasan’s massacre at Ft. Hood as “workplace violence,” not the act of jihad that it was. This is the administration that used bogus crime stats to sell a false picture of security on the Texas-Mexico border for years.

National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said officials in Washington had not confirmed the plot described by the Iraqi prime minister and were looking into the report. “We take any threat seriously and always work to corroborate information we receive from our partners,” Hayden said. “We’re obviously very focused on the issue of foreign fighters, as you saw evidenced yesterday at the [United Nations] Security Council session the president chaired.”

U.S. officials said they found it odd that the prime minister would make such a public announcement about such a threat instead of sharing it through normal channels.

Such as, leaking details of, say, a raid to recover ISIS hostages, to the media instead of Congress? Yeah, who does that?

I think it’s fair to be skeptical of all concerned at this point. The Iraqis certainly have an interest in keeping the very real ISIS threat alive. But the Obama administration just doesn’t want anyone to think very much about the porous border and the myriad other ways terrorist can and do get into the country.