Because Crusades.

Via @drawandstrike:

"One was Aleppo, another was an industrial area known as Shaykh Najjar and the third was in the ISIS stronghold of Raqqa," Herridge said.

"By the spring of 2014, the ISIS captors, we're told, felt so confident in their situation that there was very little visible security around the hostages. And by May, eight Western hostages were held together in one location," Herridge said.

She added that Mueller was kept separate from the men, but she was able to communicate with other Western hostages, including James Foley, that she was not being mistreated or abused by her ISIS captors.

According to Herridge, there was very specific intelligence about the location of a group of Western hostages in May 2014, so specific that intelligence officials even knew in which building they were being held.

"The question is why there was such a delay by the White House to act on this information," Herridge said. "They did not OK the rescue operation until about seven weeks later. And there was clearly a fundamental disconnect between the quality of the intelligence, which the rescue team felt was of a sufficient level that they could act, and what was described to me as a significant delay on behalf of the White House, asking for the intelligence to build up further before they would act."

Herridge said that this was the last and best opportunity to rescue all of the hostages together, because after ISIS learned of the possible raid, the hostages were no longer held together.

