Recent reports that Al-Qaeda militants have taken over parts of Iraq serve as a stark reminder that the United States has for decades played a crucial role in both directly and indirectly aiding in the spread of terrorists around the Middle East and North Africa as a Machiavellian tool of neo-colonialism. There’s a very good reason why Al-Qaeda now controls more territory in the Arab world than ever before.

Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported that Al-Qaeda militants under the banner of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) had captured parts of Ramadi and were already ensconced in the center of the city of Fallujah.

The re-emergence of Al-Qaeda in Iraq emphasizes how the United States’ near nine year occupation of the country, during which hundreds of thousands of Iraqis along with thousands of U.S. troops were killed, was a colossal failure.

However, the mere presence of Al-Qaeda insurgents in Iraq is once again being used as a justification by the Pentagon for sending American soldiers back into the meat-grinder, underscoring how the terror group has repeatedly served as a convenient casus belli for military expansion.

In recent years, the symbiotic relationship between Al-Qaeda and the U.S. military industrial complex has become more transparent than ever.

When Ted Cruz infamously warned against the U.S. acting as “Al-Qaeda’s air force,” he was referring to White House support for rebel jihadists in Syria, the most effective of whom represent groups like ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra.

While the Obama administration has claimed all along that it only seeks to aid “moderate” rebels, studies show that the civil war in Syria has allowed groups like ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra to gain a new foothold, leading to a process of “revival and resuscitation” for Al-Qaeda, a group that had previously been on life support.

When Jabhat al-Nusra was declared a terrorist organization by the State Department, after which it swore allegiance to Al-Qaeda, 29 so-called “moderate” rebel groups in turn professed allegiance to Jabhat al-Nusra, rendering the Obama administration’s claim that it was only backing “moderate” militants completely meaningless.

These same militants, backed not only by the US but by every major NATO power, have repeatedly voiced their hatred for and intention to destroy America, as they ransack Christian churches, burn US flags, chant anti-American slogans and sing the praises of Osama Bin Ladenwhile glorifying the 9/11 attacks.

As the New York Times reported, these very same terrorists killed U.S. troops in Iraq and yet western backing for the insurgency against Bashar Al-Assad has enabled violent extremists to seize power in pockets of Syria and beyond into Iraq.

As multiple reports now confirm, Jabhat al-Nusra, the main Al-Qaeda group in Syria, is now commanding rebels and is engaged in “the heaviest frontline fighting” in Syria. As the London Guardian reported, rebels in Syria are admittedly being led by Al-Qaeda terrorists, who meet with them “every day” and train them how to make bombs. Sheik Moaz al Khatib, head of the Syrian National Coalition of Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, has also publicly affirmed his support for the terrorist group.

These same terrorists have also vowed to attack the United States once they are finished in Syria, while proclaiming their desire to see the Al-Qaeda flag flying over the White House.

However, despite the Obama White House, along with close allies like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, playing a key role in funneling terrorists into Syria, the administration is now citing infighting amongst Al-Qaeda groups like ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, as well as Al-Qaeda’s presence in Iraq (which couldn’t have happened without US support for rebel jihadists in Syria), as a reason for the U.S. to become entangled in both Syria and Iraq once again.

In supporting Al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria as part of the effort to impose regime change, the Obama administration is following the same disastrous policy it pursued in Libya, backing the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic FIghting Group, which also killed U.S. troops in Iraq, to overthrow Gaddafi.

That led to a country ruled by thugs who have rounded up, tortured and executed thousands of black Libyans. It also led to the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, which was carried out by some of the very same LIFG terrorists the United States had backed just a year previously.

After the overthrow of Gaddafi, NATO powers aided in airlifting LIFG militants into Syria to continue the fight to impose Sharia law across the region.

Image: Al-Qaeda now controls more territory in the Arab world than ever before.

However, using Al-Qaeda militants as pawns on a geopolitical chess board to justify neo-colonial expansion isn’t a modern phenomenon restricted to the Obama administration.

Under George W. Bush, Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups like Jundallah were used to carry out bombings and assassinations in Iran as part of a wider destabilization campaign aimed at Tehran.

The United States’ close relationship with the group that came to be known as Al-Qaeda stretches back to the late 1970′s when Osama Bin Laden was armed and funded by the CIA through the Pakistani ISI to lead the Muslim mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

After this, Bin Laden led Al-Qaeda to Bosnia shortly after the outbreak of war in 1992 to fight against Bosnian Serbs who were subsequently the target of NATO air strikes.

Shortly before the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda moved into Kosovo, Serbia’s southern province, to aid the Kosovo Liberation Army, the Albanian terrorist faction that was being supported by the U.S. and NATO in its terror campaign against Serbs in the region.

“The United States, which had originally trained the Afghan Arabs during the war in Afghanistan, supported them in Bosnia and then in Kosovo,” reported the National Post.

With the help of Bin Laden’s terror network, backed up by the U.S. and NATO, no less than 90% of Serbians were “ethnically cleansed” and forced to leave the region, while the international media played its role dutifully in portraying the Albanians as the “victims” of Serbian aggression.

Barely weeks before 9/11, former members of Al-Qaeda who had subsequently joined the Kosovo Liberation Army were airlifted out of Macedonia by U.S. paratroopers.

As former FBi translator Sibel Edmonds revealed, the US maintained “intimate relations” with Bin Laden, “all the way until that day of September 11.”

Members of Bin Laden’s terror network continued to maintain close ties with the U.S. and its allies even after 9/11.

Anwar Al-Awlaki, the man who helped plot the aborted Christmas Day bombing, the Fort Hood shooting, the Times Square bombing attempt, and who also preached to the alleged September 11 hijackers, dined at the Pentagon just months after 9/11.

The alleged mastermind of the 7/7 bombings in London, Haroon Rashid Aswat, was also revealed to be an intelligence asset, in this case working for British MI6.

Saudi Arabia’s former US envoy Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, known as “Bandar Bush” for his close relationship with former President George W. Bush and his father, is another terror mastermind on the payroll of the US military-industrial complex. Bandar worked closely with CIA Director George Tenet, when he was Saudi Ambassador in Washington.

Bandar went off the radar after it emerged that he had become the de facto leader of “Al-Qaeda in Iraq,” having been responsible for arming terrorist organizations in the Middle East. The man who George W. Bush reportedly consulted before the 2003 invasion of Iraq has trained, funded and equipped terrorists to kill US troops, providing the US government with the perfect justification to remain as an occupying force in the country.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, as Afghan President Hamid Karzai made clear last year, the Obama administration is now also colluding with the Taliban while the group carries out suicide bombings in the “service of America,” providing the perfect pretext for U.S. troops to remain in the country guarding opium fields while Afghanistan’s heroin exports continue to hit record highs.

In virtually every single case, from Afghanistan, to Serbia, to Iraq, to Libya, to Syria, the United States has aided or in the very least exploited Al-Qaeda’s presence as a justification for war, regime change and occupation.

Thanks to this policy, Al-Qaeda now controls more territory in the Arab world than ever before. If 9/11 really did mark the beginning of a “war on terror,” then the terrorists are clearly winning.

This is why the so-called war on terror has been a monumental fraud from the very start. The U.S. military industrial complex needs terrorists in order to necessitate neo-colonial expansion abroad and domestic oppression at home, which is why the U.S. government does its best to create and sustain them in virtually every corner of the Middle East and North Africa.

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

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