Senior U.S. officials admit that they were blindsided by ISIS and had no contingency plans. Yahoo News.

ISIS fighters during the capture of Mosul. Yahoo/AP. 

Joint Chiefs Chairman General Patrick Dempsey admitted that the United States had no contingency plans in the lead up to the fall of Mosul last summer to ISIS. Yahoo News. On the PBS news show, Frontline, Dempsey admitted that the United States was caught by surprise by ISIS's capture of the northern Iraqi city of one million people. He said that they did not know that ISIS had the military capability or the allies to take the city. Dempsey was not the only U.S. official to drop the ball on ISIS as President Obama called them the J.V. team. CIA director also admited to not suspecting that Mosul would fall. 

My Comment:

The Frontline documentary can be found here. I haven't had time to watch it unfortunately, it sounds interesting. There also sounds like there is some discussion about Obama's decision making during the Syrian conflict. It sounds like we were very close to being at war with them as well, but at the last moment Obama pulled back. 

As for the article itself, I can't believe what I am hearing. How on earth were there no contingency plans for the fall of Mosul?!? The Pentagon is supposed to plan for all outcomes, no matter how unlikely they are. Back in the day we had war plans to fight Canada and the United Kingdom, two of our closest allies, because even if it was all but impossible, you still plan for it. Hell, I am pretty sure the Pentagon has war plans for things as unlikely as alien invasions and zombie apocalypses. But no plans for a major terrorist group taking over a major city in a country that we are supposed to have good intelligence assets in? Really? 

I really hope someone lost their job over this. The rise of the Islamic State should have been predicted. Mosul did not have to fall. I knew for months that ISIS was a major threat to Iraq and Syria. Their propaganda films alone showed how dangerous they are. And those films were released way before Mosul fell. They showed assassinations, executions and Iraqi soldiers being pushed back. Though Mosul was a shock to me as well, I don't think anyone thought that they would take Mosul so quickly, how did they not plan for it? Even back then, in the back of my mind I thought about what would happen if ISIS grew more powerful. But nobody in the Pentagon did? 

Someone must have. The military is many things but they are not stupid. I am sure that some analyst somewhere made a report that showed how dangerous ISIS was and that planning should begin to prepare for the possibility of them gaining a larger foothold in Iraq. My guess is that the recommendations were buried for political reasons. 

The only other option is that our intelligence gathering capabilities are so drowned out with noise that we really did have no idea how bad ISIS really was. If true that means we are wasting billions of dollars and violating the rights of millions of people for little gain. You would think that with the NSA, CIA and DIA spying on everyone and anyone that is remotely connected to Islamic terrorism they would have had an accurate picture of what ISIS was doing.

 I think this explanation is less likely then the concerns being buried for political reasons. At least I really hope it is. Obama had  Iraq was supposed to be Obama's legacy. He was supposed to have corrected the mistakes of the mean ol' Bush administration and left Iraq, strong, stable and free. Having a group like ISIS show up kind of destroyed that myth. My guess is that the Obama administration essentially put their fingers in their ears and ignored what they were hearing out of Iraq for the sake of political expediency.

Was there anything that could have been done though? I guess airstrikes could have helped save Mosul, but that would have been an unpopular move to say the least. Advisers could have been sent as well, but that would have been even more unpopular. Intelligence could have been gathered and passed on to the Iraqis, which could have remained secret and may have helped Iraq hold on to the city. Given how weak the Iraqi Army was, I doubt it would have helped. The best thing that could have been done, not withdrawing combat troops, was dong long before ISIS was even a threat.