Tag Archives: Al Qaeda

Continuing to Low-ball Jihadis in Syria Will Come Back to Bite Us

The mainstream media and the Obama Administration continue to minimize the extent of jihadi influence in Syria, even while ostensibly reporting on the threat possessed by battle-hardened foreign fighters returning from the civil war there.

In his column, “A nightmare group in Syria could target the U.S.”, David Ignatius cites U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, where Clapper caps the number of extremists operating in Syria at “26,000.”

The Administration has held steady at 26,000 “extremists” (an ill-defined largely meaningless term), even as Syria-watchers have put the number of self-described jihadists and those seeking to establish an Islamic state, or implement shariah, much higher.  As far back as September of last year, reports indicated that “nearly half” of the Syrian opposition are “Islamist” in disposition.

And there are some who would whittle down the 26,000 “extremists”  even lower if they could get away with it.  In January, in the Council on Foreign Relation’s online magazine Foreign Affairs, in an article subtitled, “An Al Qaeda-linked Group Worth Befriending” Michael Doran, William McCants, and Clint Watts made the case for working with Ahr Al-Sham, an Islamist militia at the time led by the now deceased Al Qaeda member Khalid Al-Suri. Ahr Al-Sham is a dominant part of the Islamic Front faction and routinely fights alongside the Al Nusra Front. The Islamic Front was cited as a partner worth working with by the head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force Mouaz Moustafa. Links have been reported between the SETF and the Global Muslim Brotherhood. Because of the reportedly close links between SETF and the State Department, it’s not surprising that the U.S. did in fact attempt to reach out to the Islamic Front, only to be rebuffed.

This tendency to define jihadists and ties to terrorism downward will come back to bite us.

Combine the Obama Administration decision to loosened rules to permit those who have engaged in “limited material support” for terrorism into the country, with revelations by Sen. Chuck Grassley of a DHS “Hands off” list for those with known terrorism ties, and the ever present tendency to define threats down to the lowest possible common denominator, and we have a recipe for disaster.

However the Syrian civil war ends, it is not  hard to imagine that we may see lining up on our borders asylum seekers confidently informing Immigration agents, “Oh, no, I’m not an extremist. I provided limited material support for the AL-Qaeda-linked group that even the State Department wanted to befriend.”

Unanswered questions for Benghazi special committee to ask

Recent exposure of the deliberate lies and the false talking points used by our then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on the Sunday media disinformation campaign is only the tip of the Benghazi iceberg. While lying to the American public in itself is a serious offense, apparently much more serious offenses were committed by the Obama administration leading up to the fatal attack at our Benghazi special mission compound on Sept. 11. 2012.

Shocking new information was revealed by the Citizens Committee on Benghazi at a news conference on April 22. First, the Obama administration was accused of “switching sides” on our global war on terrorism by facilitating the arming of known al Qaeda jihadist militias. How could this happen when U.S. law is quite explicit about providing material support to terrorists? In short, it’s prohibited. However, on March 29, 2011, President Obama announced a “Presidential Finding” for covert operations support to Libyan rebels who were the al Qaeda-affiliated jihadist militias under the political control of the Muslim Brotherhood.

It should be remembered that this is the same Muslim Brotherhood that has infiltrated all our national security agencies and the White House.

The second extraordinary revelation was that on March 20, 2011, Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi was willing to discuss abdicating and going into exile. According to retired Rear Adm. Charles R. Kubic, Gen. Abdulgades Yusef Dibri, head of Gadhafi’s personal security, conveyed to him the Libyan leader’s willingness to consider direct talks with the United States under a “white flag of truce.” Gen. Kubic immediately telephoned the U.S. Africa Command with this sensitive information. It should be recalled that as late as March 18, this is what Mr. Obama was insisting Gadhafi do.

Gen. Carter Ham, commander of U.S. Africa Command, immediately responded with interest in setting up a direct military-to-military line of communication with Gen. Dibri. On March 21, Gen. Ahmed Mamud (a senior aide to Gadhafi) called U.S. Africa Command and stated the following:

The Libyans wished to declare a 72-hour truce for the purpose of conducting negotiations on the terms of a formal cease-fire. The talks could be held in Tripoli between the Libyan defense minister, Maj. Gen. Yunis Jahr, and Gen. Ham. If those conditions are acceptable, the Libyans will stop all combat operations immediately and withdraw all military forces to the outskirts of all cities and assume a defense posture. The Libyans recommended observers from the African Union be invited to ensure the truce is honored.

By March 22, Gadhafi verifiably had begun to pull his forces from the rebel-held cities of Benghazi and Misrata. He reportedly sought only two conditions: Permit him to go after the al Qaeda militias in the Maghreb and remove all sanctions against him, his family and those loyal to him.

Regretfully, Gen. Ham was not given authorization to proceed. It is understood that this decision was made well above the Pentagon level. It is interesting to note that the president, who had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, was unwilling to pursue this legitimate peace opportunity. The subsequent war with the loss of tens of thousands of lives, plus the tragic attack on our Benghazi compound, could have all been avoided.

The Citizens Committee on Benghazi also pointed out that there were military assets that could have responded to the attacks. The 130-man Marine Force Recon Team at Sigonella, Italy, was within an hour’s flight time of Benghazi. The F-16s at Aviano that were on “awareness alert” were already loaded with 20-millimeter ammunition should have been able to be airborne within one hour, according to a former vice commander of the U.S. Air Force in Europe.

A confidential informant who had spent several months in Libya prior to the tragic Sept. 11, 2012, attack told me that the normal procedures for dealing with a threat to the U.S. compound in Benghazi were not followed. My informant, who has participated in these rehearsals, said Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was to be taken to the “safe room.” The bars on the safe-room window were to be unlocked from the inside, then the ambassador and his people were to exit through the window and get into a car that was always parked outside the window and speed to a nearby CIA annex. The plan failed the night of the attack because there was no parked car outside the window. We need to know who moved the car and on whose orders.

The denial of all requests for increased security by the State Department and the systematic drawdown of security assets in country starts to fit a pattern. According to a report in The Guardian, even the readiness of the ambassador’s five-man security detail raises questions. Three of the four agents with Stevens left their weapons, helmets and body armor in another area under orders from the secretary of state, which was confirmed by the Accountability Review Board report. It’s shocking, since in that environment, weapons must be kept at the ready all the time.

My informants have confirmed that Stevens was to be kidnapped and held hostage for the release of the Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, currently serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. This needs to be further investigated by the select congressional committee, along with the other issues exposed by the Citizens Committee on Benghazi.

What’s in a Name?- The Boko Haram-Al Qaeda Connection

An interesting piece in today’s Daily Beast by Eli Lake discusses the possible role played by Osama Bin Laden in the formation of Boko Haram. In the piece Lake notes the disagreement in the Intelligence Community over the organization and nature of Al Qaeda:

The dispute inside the intelligence community falls along familiar lines about al Qaeda. The White House has emphasized the distinctions between al Qaeda’s core and its affiliates and other aspiring jihadists, who the White House sees as operating almost entirely independent of the central group.

However, another faction inside the U.S. intelligence community—one that comprises the current leadership of the Defense Intelligence Agency and others working in the military—see al Qaeda as a flatter organization that coordinates between nodes and operates through consensus in the model of an Islamic Shura council.

In the case of the Boko Haram debate, this latter group inside the intelligence community has pointed to documentation and raw intelligence that suggested the Nigerian group had evolved over time—particularly after 2010—into something that resembles an unofficial al Qaeda affiliate and a threat to the West.

If there was recognition within the USG that Al Qaeda views itself as organized around shariah law, the debate on the shura council model would be over, since it is a model that is understood as theological prescribed in Surah 3:159,

“…And take counsel with them in all matters of public concern; then, when thou hast decided upon a course of action, place thy trust in God: for, verily, God loves those who place their trust in Him.”

Muslim Brotherhood thinker Sayyid Qutb (whom the 9/11 Commission report noted was very influential on Bin Laden’s world view) notes In the Shade of the Quran:

 We have here a distinctive order: “Consult with them on the conduct of public affairs.” This principle, which is basic to the Islamic system of government, is established here, even when Muĥammad himself, God’s Messenger, is the one who conducts public affairs. This is, then, a definitive statement that leaves the Muslim community in no doubt that consultation is central to Islamic government. Without it, no system is truly Islamic.

Another point worth making regarding Boko Haram as an “unofficial” AQ-affiliate is it’s real name is “Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad” or “Group Committed to the Propagation of the Sunnah (Traditions of the Prophet) and Jihad. Compare that to another terrorist group in North Africa, now called “Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” but once called the “Salafist Group for Call and Combat” al-Jamā‘ah as-Salafiyyah lid-Da‘wah wal-Qiṭāl. The two names are effectively synonymous, and carry with them clear ideological meaning.  Both are groups (jamaat) committed to the call or propagating (dawa) of the traditional Islam of Mohammed and the early Muslims (ahl-Sunnah or as-Salaf) and to fighting jihad.

It is the ideology which informs the doctrine, which in turn establishes how forces are organized, and it is the ideology that drives the names groups give themselves. Our failure to understand the motivating drivers and doctrine of the enemy, namely shariah, has resulted in strategic confusion that in turn translates to the inability to agree on even basic analytical questions such as “How is Al Qaeda organized” more than a decade after 9/11.

Material Support to Terrorism: The Case of Libya

Libya in 2011 marks the place and the time that the United States (U.S.) and the Obama administration formally switched sides in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). A mere 10 years after al-Qa’eda (supported by Hizballah and Iran) attacked the American homeland in the worst act of terrorism ever suffered by this country, U.S. leadership decided to facilitate the provision of weapons to jihadist militias known to be affiliated with al-Qa’eda and the Muslim Brotherhood in order to bring down a brutal dictator who also just happened to be a U.S. ally in the GWOT at the time.

And the U.S. media were silent. The major broadcast, print, and Internet outlets said not a word about this astonishing turnabout in American foreign policy. To this day, they have not seemed even to recognize that the pivot to support al-Qa’eda took place. But it needs to be said. The American people deserve to understand that their most senior leaders, both elected and appointed, have violated their oaths to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

United States law is quite explicit about providing material support to terrorists: it’s prohibited. Period. 18 U.S. Code § 2339A and 18 U.S. Code § 2339B address Providing Material Support to Terrorists or Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Together, these two sections outlaw the actions of any U.S. person who attempts or conspires to provide, or actually does provide, material support to a foreign terrorist organization knowing that it has been designated a foreign terrorist organization or engages, or has engaged, in “terrorism” or “terrorist activity.” Conspiracy means agreeing or planning to provide such support, whether or not such support ever is actually delivered. Penalties for conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism are stiff: imprisonment for up to 15 years and/or a fine of not more than $250,000. Penalties for actually providing or attempting to provide material support to terrorism are even harsher: imprisonment from 15 years to life, with a life sentence applicable if the death of any person results from such crime. Aiding, abetting, counseling, or procuring in support of a violation of Section 2339B is punishable by the same penalties as for the offense itself.

The Arms Export Control Act is another law that makes it illegal for the U.S. government to export “munitions” to any country determined by the Secretary of State to have “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.” While this provision applies specifically to those countries—Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Syria—that are designated as state sponsors of terrorism, the case of Libya stands out nevertheless. Removed from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism in 2006, Libya by early 2011 was swarming with al-Qa’eda and Muslim Brotherhood militias and affiliates fighting to overthrow Muamar Qaddafi’s regime.

The identities of those jihadis and their al-Qa’eda affiliations were well known to the U.S. Intelligence Community, Department of State, and Tripoli Embassy long before the 17 February 2011 revolt broke out against Muamar Qaddafi. As with other al-Qa’eda branches, the Libyan al-Qa’eda affiliates such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) trace their origins back to the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya, which was founded in 1949 when Egyptian Brotherhood members “fled a crackdown in Cairo and took refuge in Benghazi,” according to a May 2012 study by the Brookings Doha Center. Colonel Muamar Qaddafi took over Libya in a 1969 coup d’état and showed little tolerance for Brotherhood activities. Brutal waves of repression kept the Brotherhood in check through the 1980s and 1990s when many Libyan fighters went to Afghanistan to join the mujahedeen in their battle against the Soviet Army. Some of those who fought there, like Abu Anas al-Libi and Abdelhakim Belhadj, would figure prominently in the revolt that ultimately ousted Qaddafi in 2011.

The LIFG was founded in 1990 by Libyan fighters returning from the Afghan jihad who were now intent on waging jihad at home. Qaddafi came down hard on the group, though, and crushed the LIFG’s 1995-1998 insurgency. Some LIFG members had moved to Sudan when Usama bin-Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri found refuge with Omar al-Bashir’s Muslim Brotherhood regime in the early 1990s and others (including Belhadj) eventually fled back to Afghanistan, where both bin-Laden and al-Zawahiri also had relocated by the mid-1990s. Abu Anas al-Libi is alleged to have taken part in the pre-attack casing and surveillance of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya a few years prior to the 1998 al-Qa’eda attack there.

By 1995, things were becoming hot for the jihadis in Sudan and while bin Laden and al-Zawahiri returned to Afghanistan about this time, others such as Anas al-Libi were offered safehaven by the British. In return for political asylum in the UK, MI 6 recruited Anas al-Libi’s support for a failed 1996 plot to assassinate Qaddafi. In all, Anas al-Libi lived in Manchester from 1995-2000—despite his known history of association with bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and other AQ leaders, as well as willingness to participate in assassination plots against national leaders, as I wrote in an October 2013 piece at The Clarion Project. The U.S.’s British partners also provided asylum to Abu Abdullah As-Sadeq, the LIFG’s top commander and allowed the LIFG to publish an Arabic language newspaper called al-Wasat in London. By 2000, though, as the FBI and other Western security services began to close in, Anas al-Libi and others were on the move again, leaving behind a 180-page al-Qa’eda terror training manual that became known as the “Manchester Document.” In the run-up to the 11 September 2001 attacks, Anas al-Libi, Abdelhakim Belhadj, Abu Sufian bin Qumu, and other known LIFG members reconnected with bin Laden in Afghanistan. As John Rosenthal points out in a 10 October 2013 posting, “The Inevitable Rise of Al-Qaeda in Libya,” in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, “the history of close cooperation between the LIFG and al-Qa’eda was so extensive that the Libyan group figured among the very first organizations to be designated as al-Qaeda affiliates by the UN Security Council.” In fact, according to Rosenthal who cites former LIFG member, Norman Benotman, Belhadj was actually present with bin Laden at Tora Bora in December 2001. The LIFG was formally accepted as an al-Qa’eda franchise by Ayman al-Zawahiri, the AQ deputy at the time, in 2007.

In the years following 9/11, various LIFG members were detained: Abu Sufian bin Qumu was captured in 2002 and sent to Guantanamo Bay (GITMO) and in 2004, both Abu Anas al-Libi and Abdelhakim Belhadj were captured. By the mid-2000s, GITMO detainees were being released to their home countries. Abu Sufian bin Qumu, for example, was released from GITMO and returned to Libya in 2007. Beginning about 2005, Qaddafi was under pressure from both the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli and his own son, Seif, to begin what came to be known as “the reconciliation process,” in which LIFG and other jihadist prisoners were released from Libyan jails. In this process, LIFG Muslim Brotherhood cleric Ali Mohammad Al-Sallabi was a key mediator. Abdelhakim Belhadj was released in 2008 (just as Christopher Stevens was appointed Deputy Chief of Mission to Tripoli) and Abu Sufian bin Qumu in 2010, after which he returned to Derna to begin plotting the revolt against Qaddafi.

Even as this “reconciliation process” was underway and Christopher Stevens was preparing for his new posting, Libyan jihadis were flowing out of eastern Libya in droves to join the al-Qa’eda jihad against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. According to a June 2010 study compiled by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, “Al-Qa’ida’s Foreign Fighters in Iraq,” coalition forces in Iraq captured a stash of documents in October 2007 which documented the origins of the foreign fighters who’d traveled to Iraq to join al-Qa’eda between August 2006 and August 2007. Termed the “Sinjar Records” after the nearest town where these personnel records were found, the data showed that by far the largest contingent of foreign fighters per capita came from Libya. Across the spectrum, the most common cities of origin for foreign fighters in Iraq were Darnah, Libya and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Darnah is located in the eastern Cyrenaica region of Libya, long known as an incubator of jihadist ideology and the place which would become the cradle of the 2011 Islamic uprising against Muammar Qaddafi.

Nor was the new Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) Christopher Stevens unaware of what was going on. A June 2008 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli that went out over Stevens’ signature was obtained by the London Telegraph from Wikileaks. The report was given the name “Die Hard in Derna,” after the Bruce Willis movie, and described the determination of the young jihadis of this eastern Libyan town to bring down the Qaddafi regime. Because they believed the U.S. government supported the Qaddafi regime and would not allow it to fall after it had abandoned its Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programs and begun to provide counter-terrorism support, and as documented in the West Point study of the “Sinjar Records,” the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) instead sent its fighters to confront the U.S. in Iraq, believing that was a way to strike a blow against both Qaddafi and his U.S. backers. A local Derna resident told the visiting Embassy officer that Libyan fighters who had returned from earlier battlefields in Afghanistan (1980s) and elsewhere sometimes went on for additional “religious training” in Lebanon and Syria; when they eventually returned to Libya in the late 1980s and early 1990s, they began the process of preparing the ground for “the eventual overthrow by the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) of Muammar Qadhafi’s regime…”

Career Foreign Service Officer Christopher Stevens was first posted to the American Embassy in Tripoli, Libya in June 2007 as the DCM and later as charge d’affaires until 2009. For his second tour in Libya, Stevens was sent to rebel headquarters in Benghazi, Libya, to serve as special representative to the Libyan Transitional National Council. He arrived on a Greek cargo ship on April 5, 2011 and stayed until November. His mission was to forge stronger links with the Interim Transitional National Council, and gain a better understanding of the various factions fighting the Qaddafi regime. His reports back to Washington were said to have encouraged the U.S. to support and recognize the rebel council, which the Obama administration did formally in July 2011.

As is now known, under urging from Sen. John McCain and other Congressional members, the White House endorsed Qatar’s plan to send weapons to the Libyan rebels shortly after Yousef al-Qaradawi, the senior jurist of the Muslim Brotherhood, issued a 21 February 2011 fatwa that called for the killing of Qaddafi. Seeking a “zero footprint,” no-paperwork-trail profile itself, the U.S. instead encouraged both Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to arm the Libyan jihadis, according to a key New York Times article published in December 2012. Knowing full well exactly who those rebel militias and their leadership were, and how closely they were connected with al-Qa’eda (and perhaps even mindful of the legal restrictions on providing material support to terrorism), the U.S. sought to distance itself as the source of these weapons, which included small arms such as automatic rifles, machine guns, and ammunition. The NY Times piece noted that U.S. officials made sure to stipulate the weapons provided would come from elsewhere, but not from the U.S.

But the fact that from the end of March 2011 onward, U.S. and other NATO forces completely controlled Libyan air space and the sea approaches to Libya means that the cargo planes and freighters transporting the arms into Libya from Qatar and elsewhere were being waved through with full U.S. knowledge and support. The U.S. mission in Libya, and especially in Benghazi, ramped up in this period to facilitate the delivery of the weapons to the Libyan al-Qa’eda terrorists.

What followed should hardly have come as a surprise to anyone. After NATO air support cleared the way to Tripoli, the Qaddafi regime fell in October 2011 and the Muslim Brotherhood political leadership and al-Qa’eda fighters took over. Abdelhakim Belhadj was named Tripoli military commander. Chaos reigned, especially in the eastern regions, and now the weapons flow reversed—out of Libya, and into the hands of jihadis in West Africa, the Sinai, and Syria. Some of that flow was wildly disorganized and some of it was directed, with the U.S. mission in Benghazi once again playing a key role as its teams on the ground facilitated the weapons delivery, now destined for the Syrian rebels, dominated by al-Qa’eda and the Muslim Brotherhood, who were fighting to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad regime. In this endeavor, the U.S. was allied with its new Libyan partner, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and once again, with Qatar.

The next chapter in the U.S. jihad wars was underway, with a new Presidential Finding, and material support to terrorism firmly established as official policy. Congress and the media and the military remained silent. The American people barely noticed.

The bitter results of Middle East failure

There is no question that American interests in the Middle East are facing their gravest threats. The genesis for the current turmoil goes back many years with its roots in the Carter administration. Each subsequent administration contributed to the turmoil, particularly that of President Obama.

There were key events, actual acts of war against the United States that, had we responded with the required military action, could have changed the course of history.

The first occurred under President Carter when we undercut our key ally, the Shah of Iran, and facilitated the return and rule of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his Islamic fundamentalist regime.

The result was the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the holding of our diplomats hostage for 444 days. Our failure to respond to this act of war served as the launching pad for radical Islam.

The second major event occurred during the Reagan administration when we failed to respond to both the bombing attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in April 1983, and then the truck bombing of the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut October, which killed 241 of our finest military personnel.

It was the greatest loss of Marines in a single day since the battle for Iwo Jima in World War II. We had positive proof the orders for the attack came from Iran. We had our Sixth Fleet Carrier Strike Force planes loaded and ready to respond but could not get authorization to launch.

Our failure to respond became Osama bin Laden’s rallying cry: Americans can’t suffer casualties, they will cut and run. In the eyes of the Middle East, that’s what we did. The mastermind for these two bombings in 1983 was Imad Mughniyeh, an agent for Iran.

Next was the Gulf Tanker War in 1986-88. Even though Iran was engaged in a life-and-death struggle with Iraq, it still continued to conduct “acts of war” against the United States. We had an opportunity in late August 1987 to shut down Iran when we had three battle groups and an amphibious ready group all coming together in the North Arabian Sea.

The plan was called “Window of Opportunity.” We were prepared to proceed systematically up the Persian Gulf, destroying Iran’s key facilities and their residual military forces including the Bushehr nuclear power plant, but authorization was not obtained.

It is important to understand that in the early 1990s Iran, Hezbollah and al Qaeda formed a terrorist alliance. They overcame the Sunni-Shia religious divide in order to confront the “great Satan,” the United States.

With the help of Imad Mughniyeh, this alliance led to several well-known terror attacks, including the 1996 truck bombing of the U.S. Air Force Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia; the simultaneous U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998; the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000; and the horrific terror attack of Sept. 11, 2001, which killed almost 3,000 innocent Americans. Yet Iran remained off-limits.

Judge George Daniels of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled on Dec. 15, 2011, that Iran and Hezbollah were co-responsible with al Qaeda for the September 11 terrorist attacks.

In response, the Bush administration launched attacks against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. These attacks were initially very successful, but then we shifted our focus to Iraq where we became obsessed with Saddam Hussein’s potential weapons of mass destruction program.

It can be argued that at that point, the United States made a strategic mistake by invading Iraq in 2003 without first changing the dynamics in Iran, which had warred against the West for 24 years and had caused the loss of thousands of American lives.

Instead, our overthrow of Saddam Husain removed the greatest check on the expansion of the Iranian Shia crescent throughout the Middle East.

When Barack Obama became president, he believed he could change the dynamics of the Middle East by engaging our enemies, particularly Iran. His June 2009 Cairo “outreach” speech to the Muslim world, with the outlawed Muslim brotherhood leadership prominently seated in the front row, in effect gave a green light to the Arab Spring.

Secular dictatorships that were cooperating with the United States and keeping Islamic jihadists under control were clearly the first target. The Obama administration embraced the Muslim brotherhood, notwithstanding the fact that its goal is to destroy the United States from within by our own “miserable hands.” Their goal is to replace our Constitution with seventh-century Islamic Shariah law.

In Libya, the Obama administration started arming al Qaeda-affiliated militias that were under the control of the Muslim brotherhood. The Benghazi tragedy is one of the results of this unwise policy.

Nothing will change in the Middle East until the Obama administration changes direction. First, its dangerous policy of embracing the Muslim Brotherhood must be reversed.

Clearly, the organization has exerted undue influence on both our international and domestic policies in combating Islamic terrorism. An example is the Department of Justice’s recently reported move to ban religious profiling in terror probes.

Second, Mr. Obama must give up his delusion that somehow by signing a tentative agreement with Iran, the regime will curtail its nuclear weapons program.

No sooner had Mr. Obama finished crowing about that agreement than Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper said on Capitol Hill that Iran is now fully capable of making a nuclear weapon whenever it chooses. A military option must be given consideration.

Senior National Security, Intelligence Professionals Warn President Obama Against Damaging U.S. Collection Sources and Methods

MEDIA ADVISORY

For Immediate Release 
For more information contact:

Alex VanNess
vanness@securefreedom.org
(202) 719-2421

Senior National Security, Intelligence Professionals Warn President Obama Against Damaging U.S. Collection Sources and Methods

Washington, D.C.: Seventeen former senior members of the U.S. intelligence and defense communities released today an open letter. they sent to President Obama on the eve of a presidential address in which he is expected to unveil changes to current intelligence collection policies, practices and programs.  Among the signatories were: former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former CIA Directors James Woolsey and Michael Hayden, former Homeland Security Advisor to the President Fran Townsend, former National Counterintelligence Executive Michelle Van Cleave and the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Pete Hoekstra.

Five of the signatories participated this afternoon in a National Press Club press conference sponsored by the Center for Security Policy The event featured remarks by: Congressman Hoekstra, Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin, U.S. Army (Ret.), former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence; Admiral James “Ace” Lyons U.S. Navy (Ret.), former Deputy Chief of Naval Operations and Commander of the Pacific Fleet; and Center for Security Policy Senior Fellows Fred Fleitz and Clare Lopez.  The Center’s president, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. who formerly acted as an Assistant Secretary of Defense, moderated the program.

The participants discussed in some detail the findings and recommendations of an Independent Review Commission tasked by President Obama with evaluating National Security Agency and other intelligence collection capabilities.  They were the subject of a damning new study by Mr. Fleitz and Ms. Lopez entitled, “A Critique of the Recommendations by the President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communication Technologies”.  Press reports suggest that at least some of the Commission’s problematic inputs may be adopted by the President tomorrow.

The following were among the highlights of the briefers’ comments:

Rep. Hoekstra observed that: “Intelligence is the tip of the spear to keep America safe.  We need a robust intelligence community to fight and combat the kind of threat that America faces today.”

Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin characterized the threats being mounted by al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood as those of “a serious, sophisticated adversary and they do pose an existential threat to very future of America.” 

Ms. Lopez amplified on the threat by noting that: “These adversaries are not just highly educated, very tech savvy, very sophisticated.  But they are interconnected in a way that was not the case perhaps even 10 or 4 years ago.”

Fred Fleitz emphasized the importance of “big data” to U.S. intelligence collection requirements and capabilities, noting: “The [President’s] Review Group treats big data in a very negative way,” urging that “we have to better study what big data can accomplish to promote our national security”.

Admiral James “Ace” Lyons, said: “If I were a member of Al-Qaeda…I’d tell you to go out and endorse every one of the Presidential Review Group’s recommendations….I don’t see where any of these enhance the security of the American public or this great country”.

The open letter suggests a set of six principles to guide efforts at improving America’s vital intelligence collection capabilities, while preserving Americans’ constitutionally protected privacy rights:

  1. In a world that is every bit as dangerous as that of the immediate pre-9/11 period, a superior intelligence capability is the critical first line of defense in keeping our country safe.
  2. U.S. intelligence is an institution subject to the checks and balances of the Constitution, which includes strong – and bipartisan – oversight of the intelligence community by the executive branch, the Congress and the courts.
  3. U.S. intelligence programs must respect and protect American civil liberties.
  4. U.S. citizens and people residing within the United States have constitutional protections with regard to privacy and civil liberties.  Those rights do not, and must not, extend to non-U.S. persons abroad – who have none of the duties or obligations of citizens or residents.
  5. Legitimate whistle-blowers can make an indispensable contribution to effective oversight and deserve appropriate legal protections.
  6. U.S. businesses should not be subjected to undue burdens (either bureaucratic or competitive) in the course of cooperation with U.S. government entities engaged in intelligence collection against foreign threats.

The full Center for Security Policy report is available here: http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/NSA_report.pdf

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Altering NSA Surveillance Programs Would Interfere With Vital Intelligence Operations

A national security think tank criticized on Monday recommendations by President Barack Obama’s review group to alter National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs and said they would interfere with vital U.S. intelligence operations.

The report by the Center for Security Policy (CSP) said the group’s recommendations would “eviscerate” the NSA’s collection of phone metadata, which is used for counterterrorism purposes. The group proposed that phone companies or a private third party hold the data and only allow access to them on a case-by-case basis if the NSA obtains an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court.

Phone “metadata” includes the numbers dialed, call times, and durations of calls, but not the content or subscriber names.

President Obama is expected to embrace many of the recommendations in an address on Friday. Wholesale changes to the metadata program would likely require congressional or court involvement.

CSP president and CEO Frank Gaffney said President Obama must be careful not to overreact to revelations about the program released in documents by NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

“It is highly unfortunate that in response to Edward Snowden’s actions, this review group—convened by President Obama—is advocating measures that will fundamentally interfere with vital U.S. intelligence operations,” Gaffney said in a press release.

“The threats our nation continues to face demand an empowered and agile intelligence capability with appropriate oversight by Congress, and it is our hope that President Obama’s response to his review group’s report will reflect an understanding of that need, rather than a capitulation to those whose real agenda is to weaken America’s capacity for self-defense,” he added.

The CSP report takes issue with a number of the review group’s recommendations, including several related to the metadata program authorized by Section 215 of the Patriot Act. Requiring intelligence agencies to obtain court approval for so-called 215 orders creates legal obstacles to accessing data that might be needed to address urgent national security threats such as potential terrorist attacks, the report said.

It instead suggested that President Obama defer to bipartisan legislation currently working its way through the intelligence committees that would require NSA analysts to have a “reasonable articulable suspicion” that a phone number is associated with terrorism before querying the metadata.

The report also said moving the data to private companies would raise new privacy concerns because it would then be held on less secure servers in numerous locations and be managed by more people. The metadata program is currently subject to oversight by the congressional intelligence committees and the FISA court, and only 22 intelligence agents have access to the database.

“While the review group would keep the 215 program in place, we oppose all of its recommendations on this program as they would place so many limitations on the metadata program that it would be rendered virtually useless,” the report said. “We also believe these recommendations address privacy concerns that lack validity and would actually increase the potential for real privacy violations.”

The report also defended the metadata program’s counterterrorism credentials.

“Although the review group report states that the 215 program ‘was not essential to preventing terrorist attacks,’ review group member Michael Morell contradicted this finding just after the report was issued when he said in a Dec. 27, 2013 Washington Post op-ed that if the metadata program had been in place before September 2001, ‘it would likely have prevented 9/11’ and ‘has the potential to prevent the next 9/11.’”

Additionally, the report raised concerns that extending privacy rights under U.S. law to foreign persons would tie the hands of intelligence agencies and prevent them from considering political or religious motivations, such as the Islamic extremism of al Qaeda members.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing tomorrow on the recommendations by President Obama’s review group.

Two federal judges so far have issued contradictory rulings about the constitutionality of the metadata program. Judge Richard Leon said the program was “likely unconstitutional” and “Orwellian,” while Judge William Pauley said it was an important tool for apprehending terrorist conspirators and confirming ties.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Smith v. Maryland (1979) that data like phone numbers are not protected by the Fourth Amendment because customers voluntarily provide them to companies, but privacy advocates say the ruling should be updated to consider new types of technology.

Group Run by al Qaeda Terrorist Invited to Brief Dems on Drone Policy

The representative of a human rights group headed by a designated al Qaeda terrorist was denied a visa by the State Department after being invited by congressional Democrats to discuss drone strikes.

Mohammad Al Ahmady, the Yemen director for Geneva-based NGO Al Karama, was expected to brief Reps. Alan Grayson (D., Fla.), Barbara Lee (D., Calif.), and Jan Schakowsky (D., Ill.) the morning of the Nov. 19, according to press release from Grayson’s office.

Ahmady, who also serves as a top official in an al Qaeda-linked Yemeni political party, did not attend because of visa issues. The State Department said it could not comment on visa matters.

Several Al Karama officials have faced terrorism allegations. Al Karama’s founder and current president Abdul Rahman Naimi was designated as a terrorist and al Qaeda supporter by the U.S. Treasury Department in December, along with the group’s Yemen representative Abdulwahab Al-Humayqani. Al Karama’s legal director, Rachid Mesli, is currently wanted for terrorism charges in Algeria.

Schakowsky’s office referred questions to Grayson and Lee, saying the other offices led the briefing.

“She is listed as a member attending the briefing, the briefing was led by the other 2 offices,” said a spokesperson in an email.

A spokesperson for Grayson said Ahmady did not actually attend the briefing and that the terrorist designation of Al Karama’s president was “not in place at the time of the briefing, so again, we had no reason to suspect any wrongdoing on the part of Mohammad [Al Ahmady].”

Lee’s office did not respond to request for comment.

Al Karama executive director Mourad Dhina said he was unsurprised the State Department turned down Ahmady’s visa request.

“To be frank, it was not a big surprise to us, because obviously the report [that Al Karama had recently published on U.S. drone strikes in Yemen and that Ahmady was going to present] was not something to be welcomed by the U.S. government,” Dhina said. “We hoped that Mr. Ahmady would have been able to come and present the thing and debate things with whoever would be interested in debating that.”

National security hawks blasted the Democrats for seeking advice on U.S. policy from a group run by an apparent al Qaeda supporter.

“More than a decade into this war, people serious about American national security need to look at how our leaders can be so consistently fooled by groups like Al Karama, who warn about empowering al Qaeda in public but fund the jihadist group in private,” said the Center for Security Policy’s David Reaboi.

The Capitol Hill briefing is one of several instances of the terror-linked Al Karama attempting to influence U.S. counterterrorism policy through Washington policymakers, international institutions, and the media.

The group has issued reports criticizing the U.S. drone program in Yemen and has worked with major names in the human rights community, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the Daily Beast reported in December.

Naimi is still president of Al Karama, the group told the Free Beacon. He had previously told other media outlets he resigned after his terror designation was announced.

Al Karama’s executive director said the foundation must go through a formal process to decide whether Naimi will resign, beginning with a board meeting that will likely be held next week.

“The decision [on whether he resigns] also has not been made,” Dhina said. “Technically it could also be another decision.”

According to the Treasury Department, last year Naimi “ordered the transfer of nearly $600,000 to al Qaeda via al Qaeda’s representative in Syria, Abu-Khalid al-Suri, and intended to transfer nearly $50,000 more.”

Naimi also “reportedly oversaw the transfer of over $2 million per month to al Qaeda in Iraq for a period of time” and “provided approximately $250,000 to two U.S.-designated al-Shabaab figures” in 2012.

Prior to Naimi’s terrorist designation, the State Department routinely cited Al Karama’s work in its annual Human Rights Country Reports. A spokesperson for the State Department did not respond to questions about whether it would continue to use Al Karama as a resource for its reports.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has also touted Al Karama’s work, posting the group’s testimony on U.S. drone policy on its website.

Al Karama has tried to make inroads at the United Nations as well. Later this month, the U.N. Committee on NGOs is scheduled to rule on the group’s application for consultative status, which would allow it access to official U.N. events and human rights mechanisms.

The foundation has also worked with the media. Jeremy Scahill, a reporter for the Nation, participated in the group’s human rights award ceremony in Geneva on Dec. 6, just days before Al Karama’s president received his terrorist designation.

Scahill accepted the Al Karama award on behalf of Abdulelah Heidar Shaye, a journalist and accused terrorist currently under house arrest in Yemen. According to the U.S. government, Shaye is associated with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Scahill did not respond to request for comment.

Al Karama maintains that Shaye was imprisoned because he “documented and denounced U.S. airstrikes in Yemen.” The group has advocated for his release.

Ahmady told the Washington Post in May 2012 that drones are “killing al Qaeda leaders, but they are also turning them into heroes.”

Ahmady complained about having his visa request rejected by the U.S. government, according to translation provided to the Free Beacon.

“For the second time Obama’s embassy in Sana’a denied granting me a visa to enter the United States of America to participate in human rights activities counter to American policies and abuses,” Ahmady wrote a week before he was scheduled to appear. “I am honored to be among those not accepted by the White House […] my great American friends will remain close friends […] I curse Obama and the traders of wars…”

“Why is it that the fighters of al­ Qaeda ‘the terrorists’ are the only ones who adorn a smile and whose faces show [God’s] acceptance after their death even if their faces have many injuries?!” wrote Ahmady. “A question that has been on my mind for a long time.”

Despite the addition of Al Karama leaders to terrorist watch lists, established human rights NGOs are not ruling out working with the group in the future. Human Rights Watch said Naimi’s terrorist designation should not detract from the rest of Al Karama’s work.

“The accused terrorist has resigned from Al Karama,” said Human Rights Watch spokesperson Emma Daly, referring to Naimi, who has not resigned. “Al Karama’s position would suggest it doesn’t identify with al Qaeda despite the unproven allegations against its former non-executive chair.”

The wages of national security fraud

As al Qaeda raises its black flag of jihad over parts of Iraq liberated from its clutches at the cost of enormous American blood and treasure, we are getting a taste of what President Obama’s serial national security fraud is wreaking around the world.

Remember back in the 2012 campaign when he told us, repeatedly, that al Qaeda was “on the path to defeat”?  That was a deliberate fraud, meant to shore up his Commander-in-Chief credentials at a time when he (wrongly) thought they might properly be seriously challenged by Republican Mitt Romney.

Remember when the jihadists’ flag was flown over the U.S. embassy in Cairo and accompanied the murderous sacking of two American facilities in Benghazi on September 11, 2012?  These events were symptomatic of our nation’s perceived weakness – a perception that is, as Donald Rumsfeld says, “provocative.”  (The failure of the Republican leadership in the House to hold the Obama administration accountable for such outrages – or even to establish the truth about the latter – is the subject of a scorching letter from conservative leaders, families of the fallen and others delivered on Monday.)

Remember when Mr. Obama assured us that there were “moderates” among the Syrian opposition and that we should bomb their enemy, Bashar Assad, to punish him and, presumably, with a view to bringing them to power.  As a practical matter, the only people who count among the “rebels” are Islamists, whose supremacist shariah doctrine requires them inevitably to seek our destruction.

The same goes for Assad’s Shiite backers in Iran and Hezbollah.  They hate the Sunnis of the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots, like al Qaeda.  But they are perfectly willing to make common cause against us whenever the opportunity presents itself.  Think 9/11.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.  We have been repeatedly deceived by Team Obama about the nature of the enemy we face.  And our Islamist enemies have only grown more formidable, more numerous, on the march in more places and more emboldened by what they rightly see as our submission.

What is especially worrisome is that the wages of the ineptitude – or worse – of American leaders in the face of such threats are immensely increased by the fact that scarcely any among them are even aware that we face yet another kind of jihad: the stealthy type the Muslim Brotherhood calls “civilization jihad.”

We know from a secret plan providentially discovered in Annandale, Virginia in 2004 that the Brotherhood is using subversion and sedition to destroy Western civilization “from within.”  And a new paper published by the Gatestone Institute’s Soeren Kern entitled the “Islamization of Britain in 2013” documents how far advanced this destruction is in the land of our closest European ally – and what is in store for the rest of the West if we remain oblivious to this threat.

The following are among the most appalling leading indicators of the U.K.’s inexorable submission to shariah:

  • “In January, Muslim gangs were filmed loitering on streets in London and demanding that passersby conform to Islamic Sharia law. In a series of videos, the self-proclaimed vigilantes – who call themselves Muslim London Patrol – are seen abusing non-Muslim pedestrians and repeatedly shouting ‘this is a Muslim area.’ One video records the men shouting: ‘Allah is the greatest! Islam is here, whether you like it or not. We are here! We are here! What we need is Islam! What we need is Sharia!’”
  • “In April, a documentary secretly filmed inside several of the 85 Islamic Shariah Law courts operating in Britain exposed the systematic discrimination that many women are suffering at the hands of Muslim jurists….The undercover investigation proves what has long been suspected: namely, that shariah courts, which operate in mosques and houses across Britain, routinely issue rulings on domestic and marital issues according to Islamic shariah law that are at odds with British law. Although shariah rulings are not legally binding, those subject to the rulings often feel obliged to obey them as a matter of religious belief, or because of pressure from family and community members to do so.”
  • “[There has been] a wave of sex crimes involving predatory Muslim taxi drivers who are raping female passengers. The number of so-called taxi rapes is snowballing to such an extent that a British judge has issued a warning that no woman can expect to be safe while traveling in a cab.”
  • “In June, the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales (a.k.a. the Old Bailey) sentenced seven members of a Muslim ‘child grooming’ gang based in Oxford to at least 95 years in prison for raping, torturing and trafficking British girls as young as 11….According to government estimates that are believed to be ‘just the tip of the iceberg,’ at least 2,500 British children have so far been confirmed to be victims of grooming gangs, and another 20,000 children are at risk of sexual exploitation. At least 27 police forces are currently investigating 54 alleged child grooming gangs across England and Wales.

Think these sorts of things can’t happen in America?  A decade ago, most Brits couldn’t have imagined them happening there, either.  But don’t worry, the Obama administration says you have nothing to fear – except from those of us who are raising the alarm about its submissive policies and serial national security fraud.

‘The New York Times’ destroys Obama

The New York Times just delivered a mortal blow to the Obama administration and its Middle East policy.

Call it fratricide. It was clearly unintentional.

Indeed, is far from clear that the paper realizes what it has done.

Last Saturday the Times published an 8,000-word account by David Kirkpatrick detailing the terrorist strike against the US Consulate and the CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012. In it, Kirkpatrick tore to shreds the foundations of President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism strategy and his overall policy in the Middle East.

Obama first enunciated those foundations in his June 4, 2009, speech to the Muslim world at Cairo University. Ever since, they have been the rationale behind US counterterror strategy and US Middle East policy.

Obama’s first assertion is that radical Islam is not inherently hostile to the US. As a consequence, America can appease radical Islamists. Moreover, once radical Muslims are appeased, they will become US allies, (replacing the allies the US abandons to appease the radical Muslims).

Obama’s second strategic guidepost is his claim that the only Islamic group that is a bona fide terrorist organization is the faction of al-Qaida directly subordinate to Osama bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Only this group cannot be appeased and must be destroyed through force.

The administration has dubbed the Zawahiri faction of al-Qaida “core al-Qaida.” And anyone who operates in the name of al-Qaida, or any other group that does not have courtroom-certified operational links to Zawahiri, is not really al-Qaida, and therefore, not really a terrorist group or a US enemy.

These foundations have led the US to negotiate with the Taliban in Afghanistan. They are the rationale for the US’s embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide. They are the basis for Obama’s allegiance to Turkey’s Islamist government, and his early support for the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian opposition.

They are the basis for the administration’s kneejerk support for the PLO against Israel.

Obama’s insistent bid to appease Iran, and so enable the mullocracy to complete its nuclear weapons program. is similarly a product of his strategic assumptions. So, too, the US’s current diplomatic engagement of Hezbollah in Lebanon owes to the administration’s conviction that any terror group not directly connected to Zawahiri is a potential US ally.

From the outset of the 2011 revolt against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, it was clear that a significant part of the opposition was composed of jihadists aligned if not affiliated with al-Qaida. Benghazi was specifically identified by documents seized by US forces in Iraq as a hotbed of al-Qaida recruitment.

Obama and his advisers dismissed and ignored the evidence. The core of al-Qaida, they claimed, was not involved in the anti-Gaddafi revolt. And to the extent jihadists were fighting Gaddafi, they were doing so as allies of the US.

In other words, the two core foundations of Obama’s understanding of terrorism and of the Muslim world were central to US support for the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi.

With Kirkpatrick’s report, the Times exposed the utter falsity of both.

Kirkpatrick showed the mindset of the US-supported rebels and through it, the ridiculousness of the administration’s belief that you can’t be a terrorist if you aren’t directly subordinate to Zawahiri.

One US-supported Islamist militia commander recalled to him that at the outset of the anti-Gaddafi rebellion, “Teenagers came running around… [asking] ‘Sheikh, sheikh, did you know al-Qaida? Did you know Osama bin Laden? How do we fight?” In the days and weeks following the September 11, 2012, attack on the US installations in Benghazi in which US ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and four other Americans were killed, the administration claimed that the attacks were not carried out by terrorists. Rather they were the unfortunate consequence of a spontaneous protest by otherwise innocent Libyans.

According to the administration’s version of events, these guileless, otherwise friendly demonstrators, who killed the US ambassador and four other Americans, were simply angered by a You- Tube video of a movie trailer which jihadist clerics in Egypt had proclaimed was blasphemous.

In an attempt to appease the mob after the fact, Obama and then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton were filmed in commercials run on Pakistani television apologizing for the video and siding with the mob against the movie-maker, who is the only person the US has imprisoned following the attack. Then-ambassador to the UN and current National Security Adviser Susan Rice gave multiple television interviews placing the blame for the attacks on the video.

According to Kirkpatrick’s account of the assault against the US installations in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, the administration’s description of the assaults was a fabrication. Far from spontaneous political protests spurred by rage at a YouTube video, the attack was premeditated. US officials spotted Libyans conducting surveillance of the consulate nearly 15 hours before the attack began.

Libyan militia warned US officials “of rising threats against Americans from extremists in Benghazi,” two days before the attack.

From his account, the initial attack – in which the consulate was first stormed – was carried out not by a mob, but by a few dozen fighters. They were armed with assault rifles. They acted in a coordinated, professional manner with apparent awareness of US security procedures.

During the initial assault, the attackers shot down the lights around the compound, stormed the gates, and swarmed around the security personnel who ran to get their weapons, making it impossible for them to defend the ambassador and other personnel trapped inside.

According to Kirkpatrick, after the initial attack, the organizers spurred popular rage and incited a mob assault on the consulate by spreading the rumor that the Americans had killed a local. Others members of the secondary mob, Kirkpatrick claimed, were motivated by reports of the video.

This mob assault, which followed the initial attack and apparent takeover of the consulate, was part of the predetermined plan. The organizers wanted to produce chaos. As Kirkpatrick explained, “The attackers had posted sentries at Venezia Road, adjacent to the [consulate] compound, to guard their rear flank, but they let pass anyone trying to join the mayhem.”

According to Kirkpatrick, the attack was perpetrated by local terrorist groups that were part of the US-backed anti-Gaddafi coalition. The people who were conducting the surveillance of the consulate 15 hours before the attack were uniformed security forces who escaped in an official car.

Members of the militia tasked with defending the compound participated in the attack.

Ambassador Stevens, who had served as the administration’s emissary to the rebels during the insurrection against Gaddafi, knew personally many of the terrorists who orchestrated the attack.

And until the very end, he was taken in by the administration’s core belief that it was possible to appease al-Qaida-sympathizing Islamic jihadists who were not directly affiliated with Zawahiri.

As Kirkpatrick noted, Stevens “helped shape the Obama administration’s conviction that it could work with the rebels, even those previously hostile to the West, to build a friendly, democratic government.”

The entire US view that local militias, regardless of their anti-American, jihadist ideologies, could become US allies was predicated not merely on the belief that they could be appeased, but that they weren’t terrorists because they weren’t al-Qaida proper.

As Kirkpatrick notes, “American intelligence efforts in Libya concentrated on the agendas of the biggest militia leaders and the handful of Libyans with suspected ties to al-Qaida. The fixation on al-Qaida might have distracted experts from more imminent threats.”

But again, the only reason that the intelligence failed to notice the threats emanating from local US-supported terrorists is because the US counterterrorist strategy, like its overall Middle East strategy, is to seek to appease all US enemies other than the parts of al-Qaida directly commanded by Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Distressingly, most of the discussion spurred by Kirkpatrick’s article has ignored the devastating blow he visited on the intellectual foundations of Obama’s foreign policy. Instead, the discussion has focused on his claim that there is “no evidence that al-Qaida or other international terrorist group had any role in the assault,” and on his assertion that the YouTube video did spur to action some of the participants in the assault.

Kirkpatrick’s claim that al-Qaida played no role in the attack was refuted by the Times’ own reporting six weeks after the attack. It has also been refuted by congressional and State Department investigations, by the UN and by a raft of other reporting.

His claim that the YouTube video did spur some of the attackers to action was categorically rejected last spring in sworn congressional testimony by then-deputy chief of the US mission to Libya Gregory Hicks.

Last May Hicks stated, “The YouTube video was a non-event in Libya. The video was not instigative of anything that was going on in Libya. We saw no demonstrators related to the video anywhere in Libya.”

Kirkpatrick’s larger message – that the reasoning behind Obama’s entire counterterrorist strategy and his overall Middle East policy is totally wrong, and deeply destructive – has been missed because his article was written and published to whitewash the administration’s deliberate mischaracterization of the events in Benghazi, not to discredit the rationale behind its Middle East policy and counterterrorism strategy. This is why he claimed that al-Qaida wasn’t involved in the attack. And this is why he claimed that the YouTube video was a cause for the attack.

This much was made clear in a blog post by editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal, who alleged that the entire discourse on Benghazi is promoted by the Republicans to harm the Democrats, and Kirkpatrick’s story served to weaken the Republican arguments. In Rosenthal’s words, “The Republicans hope to tarnish Democratic candidates by making it seem as though Mr. Obama doesn’t take al-Qaida seriously.”

So pathetically, in a bid to defend Obama and Clinton and the rest of the Democrats, the Times published a report that showed that Obama’s laser-like focus on the Zawahiri-controlled faction of al-Qaida has endangered the US.

By failing to view as enemies any other terror groups – even if they have participated in attacks against the US – and indeed, in perceiving them as potential allies, Obama has failed to defend against them. Indeed, by wooing them as future allies, Obama has empowered forces as committed as al-Qaida to defeating the US.

Again, it is not at all apparent that the Times realized what it was doing. But from Israel to Egypt, to Iran to Libya to Lebanon, it is absolutely clear that Obama and his colleagues continue to implement the same dangerous, destructive agenda that defeated the US in Benghazi and will continue to cause US defeat after US defeat.