Benghazi and the real origins of ISIS

I should have mentioned this story a couple of days ago, but the Hastert matter proved rather distracting. Marcy Wheeler has uncovered documentation which proves that Sy Hersh was right about the real Benghazi scandal: The CIA was keeping tabs on Libyan weapons as they were shipped to the rebels in Syria.

The August 2012 document describes how the U.S. ended up on the same general side in the Syrian Civil War as Al Qaeda in Iraq, the predecessor to ISIS. “AQI supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning,” the report explained. Meanwhile, “[w]estern countries, the Gulf states, and Turkey are supporting” rebel efforts against the Assad regime in a proxy war, putting them on the same side as, if not working together with, the terrorists now overrunning Iraq.

Some outlets have concluded that this means “the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad.”

Well, yeah. That is the obvious conclusion.

The idea that the CIA allowed guns to go to Al Qaeda in 2012 gives the lie to pretty much every one of this administration's claims about the war on terror. Not only that: The Republican party refuses to talk about it. GOP propagandists -- who never stop hurling inane or trivial charges at this president, who invent all sorts of anti-Clinton pseudo-scandals -- refuse to mention that the CIA (through action or inaction) essentially armed Al Qaeda, and that this happened while Hillary was SoS.

The silence of the GOP on this issue tells us much about the degree of neocon control over both parties.

Marcy then brings us to the curious case of Michael Morrell, everyone's favorite CIA flack.

In a closed hearing with the House Intelligence Committee on November 15, 2012, Morell admitted to knowing weapons were being transferred from Benghazi to Syria. Curiously, he claimed to know less about how those weapons were getting to Syria than what the DIA reported a month earlier. Still, when asked by Devin Nunes “who is coordinating” the weapons transfers, Morell offered up a positive answer; while the names of those countries mentioned by Morell have been redacted, we know that in fact it was our Gulf allies and Turkey who were doing so.

In a later interview, the questions got more detailed. Had any weapons that had been stored at the annex been sold or gotten into the hands of anyone? When Morell answered in the negative, then-Rep. Mike Rogers actually interrupted him to clarify that “[t]here may be an exception” to Morell’s categorical denial, even if such occurrences were “not the rule.” That exception seems to suggest the CIA may have been more closely tied to these transfers than Morell let on.

Both times these questions came up in closed hearings, the room had to be cleared of those without clearance to learn about these weapons transfers.

If the CIA were innocent, why the executive session?

Here's what Mikey said to Newsmax earlier this year:

Speculation that the Benghazi CIA base was being used to move weapons to Syrian rebels before the Sept.11, 2012 attack on it are untrue, says former CIA Director Michael Morell.

In an interview shown Monday on Fox News Channel's "Special Report," Morell backed up his assertions in his new book, "The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism from al-Qaida to ISIS."
When asked by host Bret Baier whether CIA officers were tracking the movement of weapons from Libya to Syria, Morell said, "I can't talk about that."

He insisted the United States played no role whatsoever in moving weapons. "Whether we were watching other people doing it, I can't talk about it," he said.

Back to Marcy:

The conclusion of the final House report is clear, however: “From the Annex in Benghazi, the CIA was collecting intelligence about foreign entities that were themselves collecting weapons in Libya and facilitating their passage to Syria.” Long story short: The CIA was watching closely as our allies transferred weapons to Syrian rebels.

The Intelligence Community (IC) knew that AQI had ties to the rebels in Syria; they knew our Gulf and Turkish allies were happy to strengthen Islamic extremists in a bid to oust Assad; and CIA officers in Benghazi (at a minimum) watched as our allies armed rebels using weapons from Libya. And the IC knew that a surging AQI might lead to the collapse of Iraq.

That’s not the same thing as creating ISIS. But it does amount to doing little or nothing while our allies had a hand in creating ISIS.

Actually, it is the same thing as creating ISIS. At least in my book.

You know what this is? This is Bill Sykes forcing little Oliver Twist to do a breaking-and-entering job. This is Charlie Manson asking Susan Atkins to wield a knife that he himself didn't have the guts to use. This is the old, old story of a crime's real perpetrator hoping that all blame will go to his underling.

No one in his or her right mind should believe that Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia could have created ISIS and fed them weapons from Libya (and elsewhere) against the wishes of the United States. Even Morrell admits that the CIA knew full well what was happening. Is there any indication that Hillary or Obama complained to Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia?

Here's another "tell" (which I've mentioned in several previous posts): Thousands of jihadist maniacs -- in Europe, in America, and elsewhere -- were allowed to fly commercially right into the Syrian conflict zone, even though these were precisely the sort of people who should have been on the "no fly" lists. Those same lists have made life miserable for harmless professors, priests, nuns, left-wing journalists and right-wing activists. Doug Stuber, an art dealer who worked with Ralph Nader, has had all sorts of troubles whenever he tried to fly. But any Arab in Europe or the US who wanted to join the fight against Assad soon discovered that the official attitude was "Fly, baby, fly!"

Why isn't anyone in the mainstream media willing to discuss the real origins of ISIS?