White House Cannot Decide On ISIS Threat Level

by JASmius

More like they don't want to decide but can't decide on which phony cover narrative to use.  Or, in other words, incompetent dishonesty:

The Obama administration is undecided about the threat level to Americans by the extremist group Islamic State (ISIS) and how they should handle it, the Hill reported.

Translation: They don't know how to make it all go away.

The White House believes there is a notable difference between the threat of a terrorist atrocity on American soil, which the administration feels is unlikely, and an attack on U.S. personnel in Iraq, which the administration says is a clear and present danger.

Translation: They could care less if ISIS attacks us here - indications of their infiltrations of which are proliferating - but American casualties in a war Barack Obama conspicuously and crowingly claimed to have "ended" almost three years ago would be an even bigger humiliation than having to re-enter Iraq militarily has been.

Officials have added to the confusion by giving different statements at different times on the level of danger from the terror organization, according to the Hill.

As Elim Garak once said, the lesson of the story of the boy who cried wolf wasn't that he shouldn't have lied; it was that he didn't lie effectively.  And dishonesty is never more ineffective than when you can't keep your lies straight.

Which makes this passing 'graph all the more amusing:

But airstrikes in Syria, which would mark a major escalation in U.S. military action in the region, would also aid the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad at the same time the United States would like to see him removed from power.

O was all gung-ho to bomb Syria a year ago....until he wasn't.  Now he still isn't....but has to anyway?  Which is to say, this is a military decision he can't stall away?  Says whom?  And airstrikes in Syria would aid Boy Assad, who has pretty much already won the Syrian "civil war" in the sense that he's still in power in Damascus, while ISIS is occupying two-thirds or more of his country?  But isn't Assad still the same "reformer" and "diplomatic partner" of just a few years ago?  And a client state of the same Iranian mullahgarchy to whom we've pretty much conceded its nuclear weapons ambitions?  And isn't Assad largely, if not entirely, irrelevant to the issue at hand, which is eradicating the Islamic State?  Seriously, are the mullahs going to take issue with our removing a dire threat to their control of their Iraqi vassal state?  And is Czar Vlad going to object to our taking out a menace to his client in Damascus, what with his having his own problems with Islamic Fundamentalists?

Seems to me that the geopolitical decks are clear for glassing eastern Syria and northern Iraq and transforming ISIS into a very unpleasant memory.  Except for the fact that Barack Obama does not want to attack ISIS.  A truism which he feels the PR need to conceal behind a screen of contrived vacillation.  Thus, the "Hamlet" routine.

James Foley's head could not be reached for comment.