US establishment admits arming Al Qaeda, but blames it on “Obama the Muslim.” 
by Tony Cartalucci

October 24, 2012 – Neo-Conservative Frank Gaffney thinks you are stupid. After plotting for the better part of a decade, arming Al Qaeda across the Arab World in a documented conspiracy to use the notorious terror group as a proxy against Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, Gaffney and his colleagues are attempting to jettison responsibility and all the blunders that have come with the plot, on US President Barack Obama. President Obama for his part, faithfully and knowingly carried out this strategy, “heeding” signed letters sent to him from Gaffney’s warmongering circle, imploring him to not only support terrorists in Libya and Syria, but to do so more overtly.

Gaffney, in a Washington Times article titled, “GAFFNEY: The real reason behind Benghazigate: Was Obama gun-walking arms to jihadists?” Gaffney answers the question by stating correctly, “yes.” What Gaffney doesn’t tell readers is that the plan to arm these terrorists and array them against Syria was a plan set into motion, not by Obama the alleged “crypto-Muslim,” but in 2007 during the Bush administration.

Seymour Hersh, in his 2007 New Yorker article, “The Redirection Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” (covered in depth here) compiled interviews from Bush administration officials, as well as Saudi and Lebanese politicians who openly admitted that weapons, cash, and support were already being lent to extremist groups, many with direct ties to Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. Hersh would report:

“To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush
Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in
the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with
Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations
that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is
backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations
aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has
been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant
vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.”
-The Redirection, Seymour Hersh (2007)

 Hersh’s report would continue: 

“the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds
and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad,
of Syria. The Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad
government will make it more conciliatory and open to negotiations.” -The Redirection, Seymour Hersh (2007)

 The report also stated:

…[Saudi Arabia's] Bandar and other
Saudis have assured the White House that “they will keep a very close
eye on the religious fundamentalists. Their message to us was ‘We’ve
created this movement, and we can control it.’ It’s not that we don’t
want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.” -The Redirection, Seymour Hersh (2007)

Clearly, at least as early as 2007, the US, then under the Bush administration, was already funding and arming terrorists across the Arab World to trigger the very sectarian war now unfolding in Syria and beyond.

Gaffney echos the 2007 Hersh report, but attempts to pin it entirely on President Obama, claiming in his recent Washington Times article that:

What we do know is that the New York Times — one of the most
slavishly pro-Obama publications in the country — reported in an Oct. 14
article, “Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and
Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar
Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular
opposition groups that the West wants to bolster.”

In short, it
seems President Obama has been engaged in gun-walking on a massive
scale. The effect has been to equip America’s enemies to wage jihad not
only against regimes it once claimed were our friends, but inevitably
against us and our allies as well. That would explain his
administration’s desperate and now failing bid to mislead the voters
through the serial deflections of Benghazigate.