The US election campaign

So, did Obama & Clinton really “found ISIS”?

by Jim Jatras

Off-Guardian,

17 August, 2016

No one paying attention with even one eye and half an ear can be ignorant of the fact that when it comes to this year’s election the MSM are lying shills for Hillary. But now it seems they’re all suffering from amnesia too.

The latest “OMG, Trump said that!” moment is The Donald’s claim that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are, correspondingly, the “founder” and “cofounder” of ISIS. True to form, the media reaction has been to shriek in outrage that he would cast aspersions on such august personages.

As of this writing, not one American media source of which this writer is aware has brought up in relation to Trump’s claims the August 2012 report (declassified and released in 2015 under a FOIA request from Judicial Watch) from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) stating that

there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria, and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.

The “supporting powers” are identified as “western countries” (no doubt including and led by the United States), “the Gulf States” (presumably including and led by Saudi Arabia), and “Turkey” (just Turkey).

In August 2012 the Secretary of State at the time was one Hillary Rodham Clinton. The President was and still is one Barack Hussein Obama.

The DIA report said, in essence, that if we (the U.S. and our local cronies) keep aiding al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other such sterling democrats, something really nasty would arise in eastern Syria. Several months later, it did, when ISIS declared itself a state straddling the Syria-Iraq border.

At some point, even a three-year-old picks up on the concept of causation. “Johnny, if you keep doing that, you’ll [break it, hurt yourself, whatever].” The MSM would have us think that Obama and Hillary are less intelligent than a three-year-old. By dumping funds and arms into the hands of terrorists—only the supposedly “moderate” head-choppers, of course—they had no idea, poor dears, what might happen.

Except they did. Aside from the cautionary example of the chaos Libya was thrown into by “regime change” in 2011, not to mention the appearance of al-Qaeda in the first place as a precipitate from the Afghan war against the Soviets, they had every reason to heed what amounted to a forewarning from DIA. Instead, they decided to press on, aware of the likely result. This was intended: “ . . . this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want.”

General Michael Flynn, currently a Trump adviser, took over as head of DIA a month before the issuance of the report in question. Whether it was his personal effort to caution the administration or simply the professional analysts in the DIA apparatus laying out the facts as they saw them, the 2012 report made no difference. As Flynn confirmed last year, this was not a matter of the administration’s turning a “blind eye” but of their “willful decision” that led to ISIS:

Hasan: You are basically saying that even in government at the time you knew these groups were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against it, but who wasn’t listening?

Flynn: I think the administration.

Hasan So the administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?

Flynn: I don’t know that they turned a blind eye, I think it was a decision. I think it was a willful decision.

Hasan: A willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood?

Flynn: It was a willful decision to do what they’re doing.

Let’s put into broader context the Fourth Estate’s malfeasance in not connecting the 2012 DIA report to Trump’s accusation. In the last couple of weeks we’ve seen a steady parade of Republican poobahs and mandarins coming out against Trump (some overtly for Hillary though most pretending there’s some other alternative), plus a veritable Who’s Who of the Deep State responsible for every God-awful mess abroad, in both a GOP lineup and a bipartisan one. (If Trump does win, he’ll at least save time not having to draw up his own Enemies’ List.) And let’s not forget the former Acting CIA Director who’s calling for assassinations of Russian personnel (and Iranians) in Syria. Sure! It’s all in good fun! What could possibly go wrong?

In a decent society, most of these people would be in jail, not telling us who’s “unqualified” to keep implementing the same disastrous policies they’ve given us all these years. Instead, their sage pronouncements are given saturation media exposure while the smoking gun that proves Trump’s case on ISIS gets the Memory Hole.

To say the playing field is tilted doesn’t even begin to describe it. The real question is whether the American public can see it for what it is.

Jim Jatras, a former US diplomat and foreign policy adviser to the Senate GOP leadership, comments on financial and foreign policy topics and on U.S. politics in his publication TheJIM!gram. Tweet him at @JimJatras.

Trump charges Obama with being 'founder of ISIS'

Donald Trump charged President Barack Obama on Wednesday with being the founder of the Islamic State during a campaign rally in Florida.

"In many respects, you know, they honor President Obama," Trump said during a campaign stop in Fort Lauderdale. "He is the founder of ISIS."