US involvement in ISIS funding

How did we end up with ISIS as our latest reason to have our defence forces fighting alongside the US in the Middle East?

An ex-head of the US Defence Intelligence Agency has made extraordinary revelations. A recent publication stated that Lieutenant General (ret) Michael T Flynn, who as head of the Defence Intelligence Agency was America’s top military intelligence official from April 2012 to August 2014, told Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan, in an interview aired 31 July, that rejecting strong DIA advice to the contrary, the Obama administration made a ‘wilful decision’ to arm and support known terrorist groups in Syria, including Al-Qaeda, so that they could make war against the Syrian government.

Not only did Obama and the groups’ other supporters know full well that their actions would mean the declaration of an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, General Flynn charged, but they welcomed it. Here is an extract from that interview:

Hasan: Before we move on, just to clarify once more: you are basically saying that even in government at the time, you knew those groups were around, you saw this analysis, and you were arguing against [supporting them], but who wasn’t listening?

Flynn: I think the Administration.

Hasan: So the Administration turned a blind eye to your analysis?

Flynn: I don’t know if they ‘turned a blind eye’. I think it was a decision. I think it was a wilful decision.

Hasan: A wilful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafists, Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood?

Flynn: A wilful decision to do what they’re doing, which you have to really – you have to really ask the president, what is it that he actually is doing, with the policy that’s in place?

This revelation should force our government to withdraw Australia’s participation in the US’s war activities in the region.

Dudley Leggett, Suffolk Park

Editor’s note: See the full interview here.