Echoing past statements on the subject, Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump called President Obama and Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton the “founders” of the Islamic State, or ISIS, in Thursday speeches. The Obama administration and the Clinton camp immediately fired back. But while “co-founders” might have been a better term — they did not act alone and had many allies — official documents, top administration officials including Vice President Joe Biden, and vast amounts of evidence show that the Obama administration and Obama’s misnamed “anti-ISIS” coalition were actually responsible for arming, training, and funding ISIS. Indeed, a 2012 Pentagon report even stated clearly that creating such a jihadist “principality” in Eastern Syria was exactly what the White House and its allies were aiming to accomplish. Trump supporters at the rally chanted for “Crooked” Hillary Clinton to be jailed.
Trump’s comments were blunt. “In many respects, ISIS is honoring President Obama,” Trump said at a rally in South Florida on Thursday, repeatedly using Obama’s full name, Barack Hussein Obama. “He’s the founder of ISIS. He’s the founder. He founded ISIS. And I would say the co-founder would be Crooked Hillary Clinton.” Speaking nearby at an event hosted by the National Association of Home Builders, Trump reiterated those comments, noting, for example, that “our government has unleashed ISIS.” “I call President Obama and Hillary Clinton the founders of ISIS,” Trump continued at the NAHB event. “In fact, I think we will give Hillary Clinton, you know, if you’re on a sports team, ‘Most Valuable Player,’ MVP. ISIS will hand her the Most Valuable Player award. Her only competition is Obama, between the two of them.”
Trump has been slamming Obama and Hillary as the source of ISIS for months now. In June, for example, after a man that media reports and various sources have described as a homosexual jihadist shot up a nightclub in Orlando, killing almost 50 people, Trump hinted that Obama was sympathetic to jihadists. Obama either “doesn’t get it,” Trump said, “or he gets it better than anybody understands.” On June 15, Trump doubled down in an online post. “Hillary Clinton — is CROOKED!” he wrote, linking to a Breitbart article showing that Hillary received the Pentagon report outlining the administration’s plot to create an Islamic State in Eastern Syria by supporting al Qaeda. “Hillary Clinton received a classified intelligence report stating that the Obama administration was actively supporting Al Qaeda in Iraq, the terrorist group that became the Islamic State.” That is all true, as The New American has been reporting for over a year.
After Trump made the comments, though, the establishment media immediately freaked out and went into damage control mode. Some analysts suggested that Trump was once again making controversial statements as part of his signature strategy, outlined in one of his books, to keep the media spotlight constantly focused on him and his efforts. Others suggested Trump might have misspoken, despite the fact that the GOP presidential contender has been making the same claim for months now — and repeated it many times. “I really thought when I heard the comments, they would be refuted,” said a talking head on CNN, which has become increasingly shrill in its support for Hillary Clinton. More than a few other media outlets and talking heads had similar reactions.
But Trump quickly pointed out that he meant exactly what he said. Speaking to radio host Hugh Hewitt, Trump said he made a conscious decision to use the term “founder.” The host suggested the candidate might have misspoken. “You meant that he created the vacuum, he lost the peace,” Hewitt suggested, pointing to the disasters Obama and Clinton caused in Libya, Syria, and beyond. “No, it’s no mistake,” Trump responded. “No, I meant he’s the founder of ISIS, I do. Everyone’s liking it. I think they’re liking it. I give him the most valuable player award. And I give it to him, and I give it to, I gave the co-founder to Hillary. I don’t know if you heard that.” Trump eventually softened his accusation, somewhat, saying Obama’s “bad policies” caused ISIS to “come about.” That is true too, but the reality is even worse.
Unsurprisingly, the Obama administration, Clinton, and their establishment media cheerleaders were not pleased with the revelations. A conveniently unnamed “senior administration official” supposedly asked by ABC News for a comment responded only with “Seriously?” The White House did not respond to requests for comments from other establishment media organs. Clinton herself took to Twitter, though. “No, Barack Obama is not the founder of ISIS,” she argued, without addressing the accusations aimed at her for her actions at the State Department. “Anyone willing to sink so low, so often should never be allowed to serve as our Commander-in-Chief.”
Clinton’s campaign was more forceful than the candidate in denying the accusations. “It goes without saying that this is a false claim from a presidential candidate with an aversion to the truth and an unprecedented lack of knowledge,” claimed Jake Sullivan, a “senior policy adviser” to the Clinton campaign, in a statement released after Trump’s speech. “What’s remarkable about Trump’s comments is that once again, he’s echoing the talking points of Putin and our adversaries to attack American leaders and American interests, while failing to offer any serious plans to confront terrorism or make this country more secure.” In a throwback to the George W. Bush days, Sullivan also conflated Obama and Clinton with America, suggesting that Trump’s comments were an example of “trash-talking the United States.”
Despite the feigned media incredulity and Clinton’s feigned outrage, the facts show Obama, Hillary, and their “anti-ISIS” allies played a major role in the emergence of ISIS — and that it was a deliberate policy rather than a mistake. Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act and the efforts of non-profit watchdog Judicial Watch, Americans even have smoking-gun evidence that the Obama administration and its allies knowingly supported al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, and that one of the goals was to create a jihadist-controlled “principality” in Eastern Syria. The document in question, a 2012 intelligence report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) on the globalist-fueled Syrian war, contained a number of revelations that could still see a wide array of senior administration officials prosecuted under U.S. anti-terrorism laws. Some former U.S. generals and intelligence officials have even said Obama “switched sides” in the terror war.
The formerly secret DIA report confirms, among other things, what The New American has been reporting almost since the start of the war in Syria: The globalist-backed “revolution” against Assad was a “holy war” being led by al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other jihadist terrorists. The document also highlights the fact that Western governments and their Sunni Islamic dictator allies were supporting those same forces, and that they wanted to see the rise of a fundamentalist Islamic state in parts of Syria. “The West [Obama and various European governments], Gulf countries [the Islamic regimes ruling Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, etc.], and Turkey support the Syrian opposition,” it explains, adding that al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and other terrorists are the “major forces driving the insurgency” against the Syrian despot. Supporting al-Qaeda is a serious crime, and there are no exemptions for government officials.
Then comes the explanation of the goal: the creation of an ISIS. “There is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist [fundamentalist Islam] principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime,” the document states. Of course, that is exactly what happened when ISIS declared the establishment of its “caliphate” in Eastern Syria and parts of Iraq during its war on Assad and his allies. The report also warns of the potential consequences — though there is no mention of genocide against Middle Eastern Christians facilitated by those same policies, which is ongoing. In short, Obama and Clinton knew they were supporting al-Qaeda, which morphed into ISIS — the fulfillment of their agenda as described in the report. It is now known that Clinton received the document.
Even before the smoking gun was released, top Obama administration officials spilled the proverbial beans, acknowledging that Obama’s phony “anti-ISIS” coalition created ISIS. In fact, at least two of the administration’s top officials — Vice President Joe Biden and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey — have publicly discussed the role of Obama’s “anti-ISIS” coalition in building up the terrorist group. Speaking at Harvard, Biden also admitted another truth long accepted as fact among credible analysts: Despite all of Obama’s rhetoric, there was no such thing as a “moderate” force in Syria that the White House claimed to have been supporting against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
“The fact is, the ability to identify a moderate middle in Syria, um, was, uh — there was no moderate middle,” Biden stated, acknowledging that history was likely to record the facts. In other words, the entire notion that Obama and the U.S. government were arming “well-vetted moderate” jihadists in Syria to battle less-moderate jihadists is a fantasy — or a fraud. It was completely discredited by the president’s own deputy in a public speech! Biden also cited Obama’s “anti-ISIS” allies as the most important players behind the creation and empowerment of the terror group to begin with. “What my constant cry was, that our biggest problem was our allies — our allies in the region were our largest problem,” Biden continued.
The vice president specifically identified the Islamist rulers of Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, along with unspecified others such as Qatar, as the main culprits. “They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war,” Biden said. So, with that in mind, “What did they do?” the vice president asked before providing a partial answer. “They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad; except that the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world,” Biden said. He did not mention the role of the CIA and the State Department in the process, of course, but that has been well documented by countless sources, as The New American has been reporting for years.
But he was crystal clear on the source of ISIS: Obama’s “anti-ISIS” coalition was responsible. “Now you think I’m exaggerating — take a look,” Biden continued. “Where did all of this go? So now what’s happening? All of a sudden everybody’s awakened because this outfit called ISIL, which was Al Qaeda in Iraq, which when they were essentially thrown out of Iraq, found open space in territory in eastern Syria, worked with Al Nusra who we declared a terrorist group early on, and we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them.”
Lest Biden’s uncharacteristic truth-telling be dismissed as the ravings of Obama’s “impeachment insurance,” as the vice president has come to be known, he is hardly the only senior official to acknowledge that the “anti-ISIS” coalition was actually responsible for ISIS. In a 2014 Senate hearing neocon Senator Lindsey Graham — among the most ardent warmongers in Congress — asked General Dempsey whether he knew of any “major Arab ally” that embraces ISIS. General Dempsey responded with an answer that Graham, a longtime advocate of arming and training more jihadists, was almost certainly not expecting. “I know of major Arab allies who fund them,” Dempsey explained. Graham stepped in, perhaps trying to save face, by downplaying the explosive admission. “They fund them because the Free Syrian Army couldn’t fight Assad, they were trying to beat Assad,” the senator from South Carolina claimed. “Let’s don’t taint the Mideast unfairly.”
Regardless of one’s views on Trump, then, when it comes to identifying the primary forces behind the rise of ISIS, he is speaking the truth — Obama, Clinton, and their allies joined forces with known terror groups in Libya and Syria, culminating in the rise of ISIS. At this point, those facts are beyond dispute, and have been admitted by top Obama officials. At the Thursday rally in South Florida, Trump supporters chanted “lock her up,” a reference to the growing national campaign to have Clinton prosecuted for a broad range of crimes over the span of many years. Clinton critics have called for criminal charges on everything from corruption and illegal e-mail habits to treason and unlawfully aiding designated terrorist groups in Libya and Syria. While she appears to have narrowly escaped prosecution over the e-mail crimes for reasons that remain unclear, it is not too late for those who violated anti-terror laws and supported jihadist terrorism in Syria to be held accountable. In fact, justice demands accountability. And it must start at the top.
Photo of Donald Trump speaking at the National Association of Home Builders: AP Images
Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, education, politics, and more. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU. He can be reached at: [email protected]
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