Looks like the jayvee team got moved up to varsity after all. CNN grilled State Department deputy Brett McGurk on ISIS after an intelligence official told them that ISIS had become “a credible alternative to al-Qaeda” and planned on an “inevitable” conflict with the United States. Furthermore, ISIS has a lot more potential for metastasis as jihadis from around the world have flocked to its banner in Iraq and Syria, many of whom may come home to continue their terrorism if ISIS is not extinguished in its efforts.

Say, just how did ISIS get from the jayvee team to the big leagues anyway, CNN’s anchor asks McGurk. “Did the United States fail to recognize the threat of ISIS?” McGurk insists not, which leaves the impression that “jayvee” must be a term of respect in the sophomoric White House:

Actually, the impression left from Obama’s “jayvee” comment was that the threat wasn’t serious, which is not coincidentally the impression left from Obama’s handling of the situation, too. McGurk wants to re-engineer that dismissive comment and the ridicule of those taking concern over ISIS as a global threat into some sort of deliberate strategy of containment, which the explosion of ISIS across Iraq makes into an even bigger joke than the “jayvee” remark was from the beginning. CNN’s contact in the intel community just confirms the reality that McGurk and the White House have denied until now:

The Islamic State terror group is now “a credible alternative to al Qaeda” that is “expanding its presence” with foreign fighters returning from Syria, and possibly Iraq, to their home countries, a U.S. intelligence official said Thursday.

The official, who declined to be identified due to the sensitive nature of the information, has direct knowledge of the latest intelligence on the group, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

According to an assessment, the group has grown in size since the spring and its takeover of Mosul in northern Iraq as more fighters from around the world have mainly traveled to Syria to join its ranks.

The United States believes that while the group remains largely focused on its brutal takeover of large areas of Iraq, there is also an “expansion of its external terrorist ambitions.”

CNN follows up this morning by reminding viewers that the airstrikes hailed by Barack Obama yesterday as an effective counter to ISIS expansion have actually done little to change anything on the ground:

“As far as many see,” Barbara Starr sums up, “no siege has been broken.” McClatchy confirms that in their report on the status of fleeing Yazidis on Mount Sinjar:

Humanitarian aid workers warned Thursday that it was too soon to declare the U.S. mission to aid Yazidi refugees in northern Iraq a success, noting that at least 100,000 residents who fled the Islamic State’s capture of Sinjar now crowd cities and refugee camps and will need humanitarian assistance for months to come.

There is no prospect that Islamic State militants will be pushed from Sinjar soon _ the only long-term solution to the Yazidi displacement.

“We don’t know exactly how many are still out there, it’s just too widely dispersed an area,” said one international aid worker who spoke anonymously because he did not have approval from his group’s media relations office. “But what we know is over 100,000 people are going to need to be cared for, for the foreseeable future at least. And that’s on top of what was already a massive crisis in the rest of Iraq with over 1 million people displaced from their homes.”

The comment was in response to President Barack Obama’s declaration that U.S. military actions in northern Iraq had broken what he called the siege of a desolate mountain range where tens of thousands of Yazidis had fled after the Islamic State captured the nearby city of Sinjar.

At least we’ve found out who the jayvees in Kobe Bryant jerseys are, though.