how the WH created Al-Quada and ISIS in Libya and Syria

[dixiegrrrrl]

US military leadership resisted Obama's bid for regime change in Syria, Libya
( but it happened anyway)

Libya:

When the Obama administration began its effort to overthrow Gaddafi, it did not call publicly for regime change and instead asserted that it was merely seeking to avert mass killings that administration officials had suggested might approach genocidal levels. But the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which had been given the lead role in assessing the situation in Libya, found no evidence to support such fears and concluded that it was based on nothing more than “speculative arguments”.

The JCS warned that overthrowing the Gaddafi regime would serve no US security interest, but would instead open the way for forces aligned with al-Qaeda to take over the country. After the Obama administration went ahead with a NATO air assault against the Gaddafi regime the US military sought to head off the destruction of the entire Libyan government. General Carter Ham, the commander of AFRICOM, the US regional command for Africa gave the State Department a proposal for a ceasefire to which Gaddafi had agreed. It would have resulted in Gaddafi’s resignation but retain the Libyan military’s capacity to hold off jihadist forces and rescind the sanctions against Gaddafi’s family.

But the State Department refused any negotiation with Gaddafi on the proposal. Immediately after hearing that Gaddafi had been captured by rebel forces and killed, Clinton famously joked in a television interview, “We came, we saw, he died” and laughed.

Syria:

By then the administration was already embarked on yet another regime change policy in Syria. Although Clinton led the public advocacy of the policy, then CIA director David Petraeus, who had taken over the agency in early September 2011, was a major ally. He immediately began working on a major covert operation to arm rebel forces in Syria. The CIA operation used ostensibly independent companies in Libya to ship arms from Libyan government warehouses to Syria and southern Turkey. These were then distributed in consultation with the United States through networks run by Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The plan went into operation within days of Gaddafi’s death on October 20, 2011 just before NATO officially ended its operation at the end of that month, as the DIA later reported to the JCS.

But the result of the operation was to accelerate the dominance of al-Qaeda and their Islamist allies. The Turks, Qataris and Saudis were funnelling arms to al-Qaeda’s Syrian franchise, al-Nusra Front or other closely related extremist groups. That should not have surprised the Obama administration. The same thing had happened in Libya in spring 2011 after the Obama administration had endorsed a Qatari plan to send arms to Libyan rebels. The White House had quickly learned that the Qataris had sent the arms to the most extremist elements in the Libyan opposition.

The original Petraeus covert operation ended with the torching of the US consulate in Benghazi in September 2012 in which Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed. It was superseded by a new programme under which Qatar and Saudi Arabia financed the transfer of weapons from other sources that were supposed to be distributed in cooperation with CIA officials at a base in southern Turkey. But “thousands of tons of weapons” were still going to groups fighting alongside the jihadists or who actually joined them as Vice-President Joe Biden revealed in 2014.

http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/us-military-leadership-s-resistance-regime-change-1343405723

[Blue_Tires]

1. And for the counterpoint:

https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2015/12/23/how-saddam-hussein-gave-us-isis/
https://kyleorton1991.wordpress.com/2015/12/12/the-islamic-state-was-coming-without-the-invasion-of-iraq/

[cprise]

3. Thanks for the Conservapedia version

Its pretty laughable.

[geek tragedy]

2. What rot. The French and the Brits dragged Obama into that mess in Libya.

People act as if the US is the driving force behind every event on the planet.

[JackRiddler]

4. They're not actually capable of that.

Yes, it was a French-initiated production. But it was only possible with US providing 80% of the weight to the campaign. The USG had the power to say no. Once they didn't, they're in as much as the rest of them.