I said this at the start of this mess...by having AQ & ISIS in-country there is in practical terms no difference between them and the Taliban when it comes to the US, Israel or anybody in the way of their agendas...tribal differences in desires but on big ticket stuff not a spit bit of difference...
Now watch the first 90 seconds of this interview with former Acting Director the CIA, Mike Morell. Notice that he is suddenly breaking script from the official White House narrative and admitting publicly the Taliban is al-Qaeda.
Finally someone asks about Bin Laden’s #2 guy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. CTH has been asking about this guy for months, since the Afghan mess blew up. Some of you have noted there is a similarity between the Afghan outcome and the Libya/Egypt fiasco that led to the Benghazi attack. You are correct.
When you look at the actual policy that was being executed, this is where you will find an almost identical outcome between Afghanistan and the former Libya mess.
Mike Morell was put into place by Barack Obama after the Benghazi attack took place. In the aftermath of the attack; and with massive political issues about to happen; both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton needed to remove CIA Director David Petraeus. Again, falling back on the construct of the Intelligence Branch of Government – you will note that Obama used former Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate Petraeus under the auspices of a relationship with a journalist named Paula Broadwell {Go Deep}.
Attorney General Eric Holder investigated CIA Director David Petraeus for allowing journalist Paula Broadwell to see and know Petraeus’ scheduling calendar. That calendar was the “classified information” leak that led to the framework to remove Petraeus. It was a tenuous stretch but it worked. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Petraeus he needed to step down.
That was how Mike Morell was installed as the Acting CIA Director with the goal to protect Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama from the outcome of covert missile sales to Libyan rebels, that were really al-Qaeda factions in eastern Libya (Beghazi).
The Defense Department (Secretary Bob Gates) did not want to arm the Libyan rebels, because he knew those missiles could be used against our forces. The State Department, Hillary Clinton, and the CIA, Leon Panetta, conducted the missile sales despite the Pentagon admonitions and refusal to go along with it. That covert arming of al-Qaeda (AQAP) was “Operation Zero Footprint”.
With the “olive branch” (State Dept/CIA) conducting the operation, the “arrows” (Pentagon) were in the dark.
President Obama was all-in to arm the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Qaeda is a faction); after all, the ‘Arab Spring’ was an ideological shift in the mid-east by the U.S. with the intention to support the Muslim Brotherhood. The Arab Spring could not have happened without Obama supporting it. In fact, Obama initiated it with his speech in Cairo Egypt, his first foreign trip.
When it became evident to Defense Secretary Bob Gates what Clinton and Panetta were doing, with Obama’s approval, the defense secretary stepped down. Bob Gates did not want to participate in shifting the tenuous balance in the mid-east. President Obama then replaced Bob Gates by moving Leon Panetta from CIA Director to defense secretary. Panetta was replaced in the CIA by David Petraeus, with Operation Zero Footprint (arming Muslim Brotherhood factions) already taking place.
Everything taking place in Benghazi, Libya, in the fall of 2012 was an outcome of attempting to get the missiles back from al-Qaeda after Gaddaffi was overthrown. Initially they were going to shift those missiles to the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, but they lost control over the internal al-Qaeda factions in Syria (al-Nusra, ISIS) and quickly realized this was going to end up in a massively political mess (it was an election year). Those missiles were showing up everywhere, including Afghanistan, and the U.S. military commanders on the ground had no idea where they were coming from.
It was the urgent shift in policy (Obama, Clinton, Panetta) from supporting al-Qaeda to now cutting them off from weapons they needed, that caused the Libyan al-Qaeda elements, to turn against Ambassador Chris Stevens and attack the compound in Benghazi.
Turkish Diplomat Consul General Ali Sait Akin made one last trip to see Ambassador Chris Stevens to ask him to support the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria by continuing with the agreement already in place. When Stevens told him the U.S. policy had shifted, Ali Sait Akin left the Benghazi compound and within minutes the attack began.
The U.S. Generals had no idea what was happening in Benghazi because the entire operation was State Department and CIA. The Pentagon was clueless. When the contracted CIA security reached out for help during the Benghazi attack, the U.S. military -specifically AFRICOM General Carter Ham- was caught off-guard because they never knew about the Benghazi operations in the first place.
Can you see a parallel to what happened recently in Afghanistan?
The State Department, CIA and Intelligence Community (writ large), aka “Team-Two” were in charge of Kabul in an almost identical way they were in charge of Benghazi. When they lose control and everything starts going sideways, and they come under terrorist attacks, they shift blame to the Pentagon (Team-One).
What Mike Morell is doing in that interview is protecting the intelligence system from which he came. This is a similar motive he had for defending Hillary Clinton in the aftermath of Benghazi.
There is a stunning amount of hubris evident in Morell now when he admits the Taliban are al-Qaeda. Essentially the State Dept/CIA now saying of course they knew the Taliban were al-Qaeda; which is only a position they take today out of their need to shift the blame for Afghanistan to the Pentagon and White House (remember, Biden is disposable).https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/09/12/sunday-talks-hillarys-favorite-cia-spook-admits-the-taliban-is-al-qaeda/More at link showing similarity to Benghazi.
A slight disagreement with Sundance...sure Team #2 is DeepState...but so is Team#1...both are dangerous, both are unaccountable (especially now that political contests can be gamed by hijacking the counting) and both can blame each other all they want...in the end We The People are the victims.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/09/11/the-benghazi-brief-nine-year-anniversary-of-september-11th-attack-in-benghazi-libya/
H/T-CTH
Is it a wonder we live in horsesh!t times? When will the oppressors on all teams be dealt with?
