person:marcy wheeler

  • The Benghazi outrage we actually should be talking about - Marcy Wheeler
    http://www.salon.com/2015/05/28/the_benghazi_outrage_we_actually_should_be_talking_about

    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.

    All of which ought to raise real questions about why we’re still allied with countries willfully empowering terrorist groups then, and how seriously they plan to fight those terrorist groups now. Because while the CIA may not have deliberately created ISIS, it sure seems to have watched impassively as our allies helped to do so.