WND:
TEL AVIV – A Library of Congress report that received almost no media attention detailed – one month before the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi – how al-Qaida established a major base of operations in Libya in the aftermath of the U.S.-NATO campaign that deposed Muammar Gadhafi and his secular regime.
The report documented al-Qaida and affiliated organizations were establishing terrorist training camps and pushing Taliban-style Islamic law in Libya while the new, Western-backed Libyan government incorporated jihadists into its militias.
“Al-Qaeda adherents in Libya used the 2011 Revolution to establish well-armed, well-trained, and combat-experienced militias,” stated the report.
The report also said a terrorist released from the U.S. Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba became the leader of the al-Qaida-affiliate Ansar Al-Sharia in Libya, which espoused anti-Western ideology.
The Martyrs of 17 February Brigade, which was hired by the State Department to protect the U.S. facility in Benghazi, operates under the Ansar-Al-Sharia banner.
The document said scores of Islamic extremists were freed from Libyan prison after the U.S.-supported revolution in Libya.
The August 2012 document was prepared by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress under an inter-agency agreement with the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office’s Irregular Warfare Support Program. It may shed new light on the terrorism threat in Libya leading up to the assaults on the U.S. facility and CIA annex in Benghazi.
Despite the growing al-Qaida activity, the U.S. facilities in Benghazi remained poorly protected.
While al-Qaida and other extremist groups were establishing their new headquarters in Libya, the Obama administration reportedly was eager to declare the U.S.-NATO campaign there a victory.
According to testimony by the No. 2 U.S. official in Tripoli, who served under murdered Ambassador Christopher Stevens, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wanted the Benghazi facility turned into a permanent post ahead of her scheduled December 2012 visit to the country. A looming funding deadline may have been the reason that Stevens went to the compound the day of the attacks, the whistleblower charged.
Terrorist training camps
The report shows how various al-Qaida groups, including Al-Qaida Senior Leadership (AQSL) and Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), have sought to take advantage of the downfall of Gadhafi to “create a safe haven and possibly to extend their area of operations to Libya.”
AQSL in Pakistan issued strategic guidance to followers in Libya and elsewhere to take advantage of the Libyan rebellion. Specifically, instructions were given to gather weapons, establish training camps, establish an Islamic state, and institute Shariah, the document relates.
At the time of the report’s release, al-Qaida’s clandestine network in Libya was “in an expansion phase, running training camps and media campaigns on social-media platforms.”
The Libyan revolution “may have created an environment conducive to jihad and empowered the large and active community of Libyan jihadists, which is known to be well connected to international jihad,” the document stated.
The Library of Congress report said Ansar al-Sharia, led by Sufian Ben Qhumu, a former Guantanamo detainee, has increasingly embodied al-Qaida’s presence in Libya.
Qhumu, formerly a driver for Osama bin Laden, was released by the U.S. in 2007 and was transferred to a Libyan prison where he remained until being freed in a 2010 amnesty deal.
Obama created a whole bunch of ”make work” programs here in the States when he was trying to ”fix the economy.”
He wanted people to redo their windows, weather proof their doors, destroy perfectly good cars and buy new ones, build solar panels then trash them, and so on.
What should surprise us if he also created more al Qaeda for his drone program to target?
It is the same thing, writ large, just instead of wasting good money he is wasting lives.