Now approaching two decades after 9/11 and the start of the so-called “war on terror” we’ve now come full circle. With the ISIS caliphate dead, and with Pentagon officials increasingly unable to justify the US expanding Middle East footprint based on that inflated threat, we’re now being told al-Qaeda is back and stronger than ever.
This even after days ago world headlines were driven by ambiguous and unconfirmed reports that Osama bin Laden’s son and successor as head to the terror organization, Hamza bin Laden, is believed dead.
Bloomberg cites the State Department in a report this week to say al-Qaeda is “rebuilding” and appears “stronger than ever”:
Al-Qaeda and its affiliates remain as much of a threat to the U.S. as “it has ever been” after the terrorist group rebuilt itself while the U.S. and other nations focused on destroying Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, a State Department official said.
“Al-Qaeda has been strategic and patient over the past several years,” Nathan Sales, the State Department’s coordinator for counterterrorism, said on Thursday at a briefing in Washington. “It’s let ISIS absorb the brunt of the world’s counterterrorism efforts while patiently reconstituting itself. What we see today is an al-Qaeda that is as strong as it has ever been.”
And yet it’s no secret that US intelligence for years actually facilitated the growth of al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria with arms and equipment, even directly coordinating its takeover of Idlib in 2015, as some mainstream terrorism “experts” have themselves in the past admitted. From Syria to Yemen to Africa, al-Qaeda is growing, apparently, as if in a vacuum.
“We see active and deadly al-Qaeda affiliates across the globe, including in Somalia, where al-Shabab commits regular attacks inside Somalia and also has begun to attack its neighbors as well, particularly Kenya,” Sales continued in the Bloomberg report.
But not everyone with a major media platform is buying the narrative that America is somehow locked in an eternal struggle with jihadist terrorism, cast as “good vs. evil” with the USA always on the right side of history.
In places like Syria, Yemen, and in our close alliance with Saudi Arabia, “our president is supporting al-Qaeda”…
We were all lied to. We were told that Saddam had WMD, was working w/ Al Qaeda & that this posed a threat to the American people. But not only have we not gone after Al Qaeda, they are stronger than they were on 9/11 #TULSI2020 #DemDebate https://t.co/cl7xcK02rV pic.twitter.com/ckdQvIQMp8
— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) August 1, 2019
Trillions spent, thousands of lives lost, the Middle East more unstable than ever… and this is where we are in 2019, with threats and fresh 2003-style fear-mongering over a “newly rebuilt” al-Qaeda.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2LY3zY0 Tyler Durden