Pentagon Struggles To Downplay Disclosure Of ISIS War Plan

WASHINGTON — It could hardly have been a more perfect storm, and it was all because of a single question in a routine briefing.

On Feb. 19, U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for military operations in the Middle East, gave reporters a standard background briefing about the ongoing campaign against the Islamic State. The official who conducted the briefing responded to one question with a discussion of a particularly sensitive part of the campaign: the U.S.-led coalition’s plans to take back Mosul, a key Iraqi city that the Islamic State captured in a shocking victory last summer. The official indicated that 20,000 or more Iraqi troops would ideally start the Mosul offensive in April 2015.

Within hours, headlines were screaming with the apparently sensitive information CENTCOM had released.

Opponents of the Obama administration screamed too. “Never in our memory,” hawkish Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) wrote to President Barack Obama the day after the briefing, “can we recall an instance in which our military has knowingly briefed our own war plans to our enemies.”

And almost immediately, the notoriously leak-phobic Obama administration entered damage control mode.

“I think there are a lot more people in the dark on that decision than there were knowledgeable that it was going to happen,” he said. “There’s nothing that happens in this government that the White House doesn’t sign off on.”

Some analysts share that suspicion, and have hinted at strategic reasons for the revelations, just like some administration officials did early on after the briefing. To Joel Wing, a widely cited independent researcher on Iraq, the incident looked like a conscious response to mounting pressure on the administration — including from the Iraqis — to show something tangible for its monthslong military offensive against the Islamic State.

Speculation aside, it is clear that the criticism has had an impact just as the Obama administration is attempting to win support in Washington for the fight against ISIS, including congressional approval for an authorization to use military force. The fact that the Pentagon is now signaling a complete shift in plans from what was indicated at the briefing is likely to bolster skepticism about the administration’s strategy.

The department seems aware that damage control is in order. Kellogg, the CENTCOM spokesman, assured HuffPost in his email that the Pentagon would “respond appropriately to [McCain’s and Graham’s] concerns and in an expeditious manner.”

The Huffington Post