Report finds Central Command cooked the books on ISIL effort

Fox News:

Intelligence reports produced by U.S. Central Command that tracked the Islamic State’s 2014-15 rise in Iraq and Syria were skewed to present a rosier picture of the situation on the ground, according to a bombshell report released Thursday by a House Republican task force.

The task force investigated a Defense Department whistleblower's allegations that higher-ups manipulated analysts’ findings to make the campaign against ISIS appear more successful to the American public.

The report concluded that intelligence reports from Central Command were, in fact, “inconsistent with the judgments of many senior, career analysts.”

Further, the report found, “these products also consistently described U.S. actions in a more positive light than other assessments from the [intelligence community] and were typically more optimistic than actual events warranted.”

Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., who was involved in the House report, said Thursday the data was clearly “manipulated.”

“They wanted to tell a story that ISIS was the JV, that we had Al Qaeda on the run,” he told Fox News. “This is incredibly dangerous. We haven’t seen this kind of manipulation of intelligence … in an awfully long time.”

It is unclear how high up the reports in question went, though the task force found “many” Central Command press releases, statements and testimonies were “significantly more positive than actual events” as well.
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There is more.

My speculation is that they were trying to either make President Obama look better or they were trying to deceive him too.  The picture they were painting was very close to the one Obama was trying to sell during the time period.  It is hard to imagine a more irresponsible action by a significant command.