In President Obama’s interview with Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes the Commander-in-Chief reveals that American intelligence blames the war in Syria for providing the Islamist extremist forces known as ISIL–or ISIS–to transition into an even more dangerous and virulent form of terrorist actor than its Al Qaeda predecessor. The president tells Kroft that it was “during the chaos of the Syrian civil war, where essentially you had huge swaths of the country that are completely ungoverned, they were able to reconstitute themselves and take advantage of that chaos.”
In August of 2013, Obama acknowledged the urgency with which the US needed to act in Syria to prevent a safe haven for terrorists to prosper there. Back then Obama said: “After careful consideration, I have decided the United States should take action against Syrian regime targets.” But the president never took action, allowing Russian President Vladimir Putin to broker a deal that allowed the Assad regime in Syria to remain in power, at least in part of Syria. The rest descended into the “chaos” Obama references in the 60 Minutes interview.
