Posted on 11/03/2017 6:35:28 AM PDT by SJackson
The CIA released on Wednesday approximately 470,000 files of materials from the trove recovered during the May 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The materials include internal documents, practice reels for public speeches, audio correspondence, and imagery gathered or generated by al Qaeda for a variety of purposes.
"Today’s release of recovered al-Qaeda letters, videos, audio files and other materials provides the opportunity for the American people to gain further insights into the plans and workings of this terrorist organization," said CIA Director Mike Pompeo. "CIA will continue to seek opportunities to share information with the American people consistent with our obligation to protect national security."
The newly released materials provide some additional insights into al Qaeda’s operations. They also expose the Obama administration’s misrepresentations regarding al Qaeda’s strength, which may be one reason Obama administration officials resisted a public release of this magnitude.
Obama boasted regularly that al Qaeda was “decimated” and “on the run” during his 2012 presidential campaign. He made these claims despite having been informed privately by his intelligence team that al Qaeda was spreading into other regions, including in Africa, while still operating under a central leadership.
In August 2013, Obama said that al Qaeda’s “tightly organized and relatively centralized al Qaeda that attacked us on 9/11 has been broken apart and is very weak and does not have a lot of operational capacity.” He went on to characterize al Qaeda as made up of “regionalized organizations.”
When Obama made his claims, he had available to him contradictory information gleaned from a handwritten, 228-page journal kept by Osama bin Laden himself, which was part of the trove secured in the raid. That document has now just been publicly released.
The regional groups Obama referred to were not decentralized. “Groups such as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and Shabaab (in Somalia) regularly sought and received the al Qaeda master’s direction,” the Long War Journal concluded from its analysis of the journal. “And al Qaeda continued to maintain a significant footprint inside Afghanistan, relocating personnel to the country in 2010 and fighting alongside the Taliban.”
Another newly released document calls into question Obama’s decision to pursue better relations with Shiite Iran, which he seemed to think could serve as a counter-balance to radical Sunni terrorist groups such as al Qaeda and ISIS. On the theory that the “enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Obama was willing to normalize relations with the expansionist, terror-sponsoring radical regime in Tehran even if it meant jeopardizing America’s historic alliances with Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Notably, Obama’s obsession with reaching his disastrous nuclear deal with Iran led him to look the other way as Iran increased its footprint in Iraq and Syria under the guise of fighting the Sunni terrorists. The truth is that the Iranian regime had a longstanding relationship with al Qaeda.
The newly released document contains a senior jihadist’s assessment of Iran’s relationship with al Qaeda. Though the relationship was complicated, it was far from a combative one. Iran offered some “Saudi brothers” in al Qaeda “everything they needed,” including “money, arms” and “training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in exchange for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf,” according to the document’s author, as quoted by the Long Journal. There were disagreements to be sure, including with respect to the treatment of certain al Qaeda operatives who had received safe haven in Iran but were said to have broken the terms of the safe haven agreement. Bin Laden also expressed some concern about Iran’s growing influence in the region. However, al Qaeda and Iran had intersecting interests, and were willing to cooperate in fighting against their common enemy - the “enemy of America.”
This newly released information builds on a previously released letter in which Osama bin Laden described Iran as al Qaeda’s “main artery for funds, personnel, and communication.”
Was this artery still open for business while Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry pushed for better relations with Iran and reached the nuclear deal with Iran that freed billions of dollars for the Iranian regime to use in funding terrorists? Does the artery remain open today between the terror sponsoring regime in Tehran, flush with money thanks to Obama, and al Qaeda? After all, the Sunni jihadists certainly agree with the statement by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei just this week that “America is the number one enemy of our nation.”
The latest revelations confirm how badly Obama first misjudged and then deliberately misrepresented to the American people the continuing strength of the jihadist terrorist threat on his watch. He also sought to conceal from the public a fuller picture of the Iranian-al Qaeda connection that the newly released bin Laden documents expose. The decision of the Trump administration to release so much material should shed more light on the truth and dispel the myth that the Iranian regime can be trusted.
Who should think any Middle Eastern regime should be trusted? Hasn’t Iran viewed us as the enemy anyways?
Obama was right on every point until CNN says differently.
Gee, it is as though Obama were a pathological liar, or sumthin’.
Was Obama an enemy combatant?
Eh? obama lied???
WAS? No. Is.
Watch while he spends the next 30 or 40 years trying to out Carter Carter.
Except he won't touch a hammer or anything smacking of actual work.
Reading everything that is coming to light, I believe we need to strongly consider why our mechanisms to deal with domestic enemies of We the People essentially failed.
And we need to find a way to never allow it to happen again.
All that we endured from the 0bama Regime, I can’t even call it a Presidency because it wasn’t, gives one over to thinking if we could do it over again...what would we do differently?
Is the evil that walks the hallowed halls of DC unable to be defeated? Are we yet done electing lawyers and hucksters, instead of Patriots?
Given the recent revelations regarding the bankrupt status of the DNC, if no one supported them...then how did Hillary get the popular vote? That’s a lot of loyal party-line voters or a lot of vote fraud.
I still believe 0bama’s last 4 years in office were won by vote fraud.
Obama LIED? Who knew?
yes, along with Hillary in the State Department
Never forget the Arab Spring they provoked.
If you’d like to be on or off, please FR mail me.
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There should be a special cell with his name on it in GITMO right next door to one labeled Clinton.
Watch while he spends the next 30 or 40 years trying to out Carter Carter.
Except he won’t touch a hammer or anything smacking of actual work.
***********
At least Carter wasn’t a conniving, elitist liar like Obama is. Carter was an abject failure as president, but actually ran a business, served in the military, and didn’t see himself as being above physical work.
Carter’s heretofore position as the worst president ever seems to have been relieved by the even worse Obama. Carter has to be happy about not being on the bottom anymore.
Indeed. Good (for him) that he lived long enough to see it, bad (for us) that it happened so soon...
And an enemy islamist himself.
The slime ball was bent on destroying the USA and just about accomplished it. Why is the MSM still fawning over him remains a mystery. Oh well that is what you get when elect a Kenyan Muslim
Dennis Prager suggests a Convention of States where We the People take the reins back!
FRaud is the only operative word that characterizes Ophonybama’s ENTIRE LIFE!
He has been a FRaud right FRom his get-go in KENYA!
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