Obama Arms Al Qaeda

Obama and Al Qaeda
By Bill Van Auken – 5 December, 2012 – WSWS – Mostly Water

NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels Tuesday approved Turkey’s request for the deployment of Patriot missile batteries and hundreds of US and other foreign troops on the country’s border with Syria. The deployment will mark a qualitative escalation of the US-backed war for regime-change in Syria, paving the way, much as in Libya last year, for a direct US-NATO intervention.

Turkey, which has played a leading role in funneling arms, money, foreign fighters and logistical assistance to the so-called “rebels” seeking to overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad, justified its request by claiming it was threatened with the use by the Syrian regime of surface-to-surface missiles armed with chemical weapons.

In a clearly coordinated campaign, Turkey’s unsubstantiated claim of a chemical weapons threat from Syria was amplified by a flurry of allegations by the US government and major American media outlets. The New York Times and CNN cited unspecified “intelligence” about the supposed movement of Syrian chemical weapons components. This was combined with threats from President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who spoke of Syria approaching a “red line” that would result in direct American military intervention.

If the American public is experiencing an unsettling feeling of deja vu, it is for good reason. For the second time in a decade, Washington is threatening to launch an unprovoked war in the Middle East on the grounds of phony “intelligence” concerning “weapons of mass destruction.”

There is, however, one highly significant difference between how this narrative is being laid out by the Obama administration and the way it was presented under George W. Bush. The lies used to justify the war against Iraq included claims not only about non-existent Iraqi WMD, but also about a supposed threat that these weapons would be placed in the hands of Al Qaeda terrorists, resulting in new attacks on the scale of 9/11. The Obama administration makes no mention of any such Al Qaeda threat.

What makes this so extraordinary is that, while the allegations of an Al Qaeda presence in Iraq were a complete fabrication, it has become clear that Al Qaeda-connected groups and foreign fighters are playing a decisive role in the Syrian events.

David Ignatius, the Washington Post foreign policy columnist, wrote Monday that Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist militia with ties to Al Qaeda, now has as many as 10,000 fighters on the ground in Syria and constitutes “the most aggressive and successful arm of the rebel force.”

Similarly, David Enders of McClatchy Newspapers, reporting from Syria, wrote that Jabhat al-Nusra “has become essential to the front-line operations of rebels fighting to topple Assad.”

“Not only does the group still conduct suicide bombings that have killed hundreds, but they’ve proved to be critical to the rebels’ military advance,” Enders continued. “In battle after battle across the country, Nusra and similar groups do the heaviest front-line fighting.”

These Al Qaeda-connected forces have in recent weeks overrun Syrian military bases, executing unarmed conscript soldiers taken prisoner. The danger that they could gain access to chemical weapons is very real.

If the Obama administration is silent on this score, it is because the Al Qaeda forces inside Syria are acting as US proxies in the war for regime-change. They have been armed to the teeth by the CIA and Washington’s Arab allies, particularly Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and unleashed in a brutal sectarian civil war aimed at destroying the country and creating the conditions for the imposition of a US puppet regime. …more