The Al Qaeda Super Highway and the Intelligence Informant League
President Barack Obama’s highly publicized albeit surprise trip to Afghanistan was in order to negotiate the change of mission with President Hamid Karzai. While speaking to US troops at Bagram Airbase President Obama claimed:
“We are going to disrupt and dismantle, defeat and destroy al-Qaida and its extremist allies. That is our mission. And to accomplish that goal, our objectives here in Afghanistan are also clear: We’re going to deny al-Qaida safe haven.”
In so far as Afghanistan is concerned Barack Obama has succeeded, but not in the way you might think. Al Qaeda’s base of operations has merely moved to a more strategic location – Libya – all thanks to Barack Obama and NATO.
Barack Obama has done little to “defeat and destory al-Qaida.” In fact, it has been extensively reported that Al Aqaida flags fly high in the sprawling deserts of Libya and in stark contrast to the years of inhospitable conditions provided under Col. Ghaddafi. While he was no means a benevolent republican espousing liberal democracy, Ghaddafi was anything but a friend of jihadist Al Qaeda. In the final analysis, while he utilized terror and oppression, he was a nationalist at heart.
In the absence of Mohammar Ghaddafi the Lybian Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), led by General Abdul Hakim Belhadj, an avowed and documented Islamist and ally of Al Qaida since at least 2007 according to West Point’s Center for Combating Terrorism, has secured Libya as a base of operations. He was enabled to do so by $1 billion U.S. dollars and the help of NATO air bombardment.
With easy access to the Mediterranean to fund and equip operations like the armed activism in Syria, open routes to expand their virulent brand of Islam into the “ungoverned spaces” of the Sahel (zone of transition between the Sahara desert in the North and the Sudanian Savannas in the south stretching across Africa), a jump point for running terror raids and assisting cells in Europe, Al Qaeda enjoys once again – an Oasis. Who needs land locked Afghanistan cramped amidst rocky crags when you have the Al Qaeda Super Highway at your disposal?
The US Terror Factory Knows We’re Sick of the TSA
Barack Obama has done well in eliminating Al Qaeda 1.0 with Osama Bin Laden, Kalid Sheik Mohammed on trial, Anwar al Awlaki and his son dead, etc. Now we face the evidently incestuous network of U.S. intelligence and Al Qaeda. The world of high flying espionage replete with double and triple agents culminating in this week’s revelation that underwear bomber 2.0 was in fact working for the CIA.
All is well according to U.S. officials, in other words, we’ve got your back America – they always do don’t they? To be sure, “The CIA had al-Qaida fooled from the beginning,” writes the Huffington Post. The government is doing such a good job, evidenced in long series of self-regulating terrorist plots.
From Salon’s Glenn Greenwald, Sep. 29th 2011:
Last year, the FBI subjected 19-year-old Somali-American Mohamed Osman Mohamud to months of encouragement, support and money and convinced him to detonate a bomb at a crowded Christmas event in Portland, Oregon, only to arrest him at the last moment and then issue a Press Release boasting of its success. In late 2009, the FBI persuaded and enabled Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, a 19-year old Jordanian citizen, to place a fake bomb at a Dallas skyscraper and separately convinced Farooque Ahmed, a 34-year-old naturalized American citizen born in Pakistan, to bomb the Washington Metro. And now, the FBI has yet again saved us all from its own Terrorist plot by arresting 26-year-old American citizen Rezwan Ferdaus after having spent months providing him with the plans and materials to attack the Pentagon, American troops in Iraq, and possibly the Capitol Building using “remote-controlled” model airplanes carrying explosives.
Read the rest of his article, here.
In Febuary of this year the FBI flew to the rescue again in the capture of 29-year-old Moroccan, Amine El Khalifi. Evidently the FBI didn’t throw him out of the country when they found out he’d been here illegally for 13 years, rather in a nearly year long grooming session they provided false equipment guns, bombs, etc. and staged an elaborate entrapment. Following their standard operating procedure once FBI agents captured Khalifi they broadcasted their brilliant gumshoe tactics to the American public.
There is seemingly a different goal in mind with this most recent CIA/FBI capture. According to the Huffington Post they know they can’t push the public through any more invasive screening:
“Security procedures at U.S. airports remained unchanged Tuesday, a reflection of both the U.S. confidence in its security systems and a recognition that the government can’t realistically expect travelers to endure much more.”
Instead, the government, if it is to continue its ability to “thwart” terrorism, won’t reach as far down our pants, but they will argue for ever more surveillance according to Robert Muller, Director of the FBI.
While Janet Napolitano believes her security measures would have saved the day, Muller “urged Congress on Wednesday to renew wide-ranging surveillance authority to thwart terrorism plots” like the latest Yemeni would-be bomber who worked as a CIA informant.
While at least 4 intelligence agencies including the U.S. State Department knew before hand about the first underwear bomber on Christmas of 2009 and did nothing (perhaps offer a fake bomb a la Khalifi), Nigerian, Farouk Abdulmuttalab, was let on the plane.
Evidently, as was the case with Khalifi, some of the 9/11 terrorists and numerous other incidences over the past ten years government just doesn’t have enough tools at its disposal. The Department of Homeland Security? Fusion centers? Enhanced surveillance? The PATRIOT Act? Robert Muller must be right, we need more to fully secure this country.
From the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) covering a Washington Post article describing how Abdulmuttalab’s visa denial was reversed:
…not once, but twice, State Department failed in keeping a U.S. visa out of a terrorist’s hands. The Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had initially had his visa denied in 2004, four years prior to his 2008 application. In 2004, he applied again, and the initial denial was overturned because a supervisory consular officer decided Abdulmuttalab’s father was too prominent in Nigerian politics and finance to upset the U.S. diplomatic applecart in that country and deny his son a visa. Ironically, this was the same father who four years later visited the U.S. embassy in Nigeria and sought to help the U.S. keep his son out of the U.S., only subsequently to have the U.S. decide he was not important enough to listen to.
It was after the first underwear bomber that we received heightened security measures – pat downs, personal screenings and our lovely mini bake ovens (made by former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff) which reveal our shapely bodies to the blue shirts. What will happen after this 2nd underwear bomber and when Robert Muller gets his green light on more “wide-ranging surveillance authority?” TSA might have reached its zenith, for the time being, but what other parts of the government might be augmented to catch “future threats” imagined or otherwise?
I leave you with this from Judge Andew Napolitano of Fox News:
Topher Morrison is the editor and a regular contributor at GreeneWave and creator of his own blog at PurpleSerf.com. He holds B.A.s in Political Science and Philosophy from Arizona State University. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
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