"This Is Going To Get Very Ugly" - Former Top CIA Officer Says "Obama Has Lost Control Of The Middle East"

With Thursday’s tragic mass killing by a resclusive, truck-driving Tunisian maniac in Nice having been violently drowned out by the frentic late Friday news of a failed (and perhaps staged) coup in Turkey, the news cycle has once again shifted its attention away from a far greater threat to the global economy than whether Erdogan can concentrate even more power in his grasp. Namely, both lone-wolf and organized terrorism in Europe (and elsewhere). And according to at least one CIA field commander, Gary Bernsten, it is all Obama’s fault.

As the Hill reports, the decorated former CIA career officer who served in the Directorate of Operations between October 1982 and June 2005, said on Friday that Obama has lost control of the Middle East following attacks in France that left at least 84 dead. “This is going to get very, very ugly,” Gary Bernsten said on Fox & Friends Friday.

“The president of the United States, as Newt Gingrich has stated, has failed in his responsibilities to defend the United States. He has lost control of the Middle East. It is in flames, and that is what he will leave when he leaves office.” One can also make the argument that it is not so much Obama, as his first secretary of state, the person who in less than 4 months may be America’s next president.

We wonder what Bernsten would add after last night’s even more disturbing events in Turkey. As we just witnessed over the past 24 hours, the Middle East is indeed in flames, and what’s worse, the US has zero control. As Ali Watkins reported overnight, US officials were caught completely off guard by Friday’s attempted Turkish coup.

The State Department scrambled to alert citizens in Turkey, urging them to shelter in place and check in with family members in the U.S. The White House said President Obama had spoken with Secretary of State John Kerry, and both urged “all parties” in Turkey to support the democratically elected government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and “avoid violence or bloodshed,” but the statement avoided using the word “coup.”