For all the billions we dump into intelligence gathering on friend, enemy, and citizen, and basically anyone with email or a phone, for all the pissing done on the 4th Amendment, the whole ISIL/ISIS crisis in Iraq seems to have been a complete surprise to our political masters.
Perhaps they’re too busy spying on Congress to actually gather intelligence about real threats.
Of course, Congress is no real threat. They know that the TLAs know where the bodies are buried, and they better keep their traps shut, and oversight committees a farce, unless they want the real stuff coming out from an unnamed source.