For *this* specific White House to make such a claim, against the visible history of their previous positions, one can only reasonably conclude the “Bathtub Principle” is being applied to the current al-Qaeda situation in Iraq.
This administration only feigns ignorance when feigning ignorance benefits their position and is part of their larger strategy.  “Wha,.. who… us”?  
WASHINGTON DC – Senior Obama administration officials’ closed-door briefing to senators Tuesday night revealed that the White House did not anticipate and was not prepared for the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), which has wreaked havoc in Iraq and seized many key cities in recent weeks.

Top State Department and Defense Department officials joined senators Tuesday evening for a briefing on the quickly developing chaos in Iraq and future U.S. plans for a response.
Sources familiar with the brief said that the administration officials repeated talking points issued over the past several days in both open and closed door meetings and had trouble communicating a concrete plan for response.
The brief was conducted by Assistant Secretary of State Anne Patterson, Assistant Secretary of Defense Elissa Slotkin, Vice Admiral Frank Pandolfe, and an official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, according to a senior Senate insider.
The officials told senators that the White House and intelligence agencies failed to predict ISIL’s overwhelming rise and were “not sure what to do,” according to the source.
Administration officials also could not communicate a concrete plan to move forward and recommended that more “assessments” of the situation be conducted.
“It was obvious that the White House did not anticipate and was not prepared” to respond to the situation in Iraq, according to one source familiar with the briefing.  (read more)

The “Bathtub Principle” is a method of responsibility avoidance:

…”You accidentally knock over a 200 gal fish tank in your living room – you can either deal with it (clean it up), or you can intentionally overflow the bathtub, make the flood worse, call the insurance company, file a claim, and have someone else deal with it.   In essence you cover your mistake (avoid confronting it) by making a larger crisis that forces others to deal with”….

The key to identifying what is being avoided – is to look around beyond the immediate crisis placed in front of you.  Look around and see if you can identify what the fish tank represents inside the situation observed.