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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRobert Parry: Forgetting Why al-Qaeda Spread
Because that shitstain Bush invaded Iraq, that's why
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/289-134/21369-forgetting-why-al-qaeda-spread
Left out of the Post's narrative is the fact that al-Qaeda didn't exist in Iraq (or in many other places outside of a few remote areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan) until Bush - with the enthusiastic support of the Post's editorial page - invaded Iraq in 2003 and destroyed the delicate balance between Sunni and Shiite sectarian interests across the Middle East. Before and during the war, the Post also helped spread a lot of lies to the American people.
To rile up the American public still traumatized by the 9/11 attacks, Bush and the neocons had pretended that al-Qaeda was in league with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein who was planning to give the terrorists some of his vast stores of WMD. Thanks to the complicity of the Post and other major U.S. news outlets, the public heard almost no dissent to this false narrative. Not only was the secular Hussein a fierce enemy of al-Qaeda's brand of Sunni extremism but he had long ago destroyed his WMD stockpiles.
But Bush and the neocons got their invasion of Iraq nonetheless. They ousted Hussein, a Sunni, and replaced him with another authoritarian regime led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite. The sectarian power shift in Baghdad and the U.S. military occupation transformed the Sunni-dominated territories of western Iraq into fertile ground for al-Qaeda, which also understood that keeping American forces tied down in Iraq would keep attention away from the surviving al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden, holed up in Pakistan.
Through Bush's last five years in office - amid intense anti-Americanism over the Guantanamo Bay prison andexacerbated by the U.S. invasion of Iraq - al-Qaeda affiliates began poppingup in other Sunni countries, including Yemen and Libya, while retaining a foothold in Iraq despite many Sunni tribes joining in the fight against the extremists in 2006.
Much like how Saudi national Osama bin Laden got his start in the 1980s in Afghanistan, this spreading Sunni extremism was largely financed by Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf sheikdoms. (The section of the 9/11 Commission's report aboutSaudi assistance to al-Qaeda remains classified to this day.)
Cha
(295,899 posts)whoreville.
Thanks eridani & Robert Parry
politicman
(710 posts)Its amazing how conservatives can just forget history and start their argument at whatever point they think suits their argument.
I always wonder why people don't see that killing 10 innocent people in the same act of targeting a terrorists creates 10 new enemies who just lost an innocent family member and now want revenge?
No matter how much money and blood is spent trying to defeat Al Queda, they will just continue to grow because the U.S is constantly feeding them new recruits every time it kills an innocent person whilst targeting one of their members.