14-09-18 02:23:00,
by Eric Zuesse for The Saker Blog
There’s plenty of proof that the U.S. Government protects Al Qaeda in Syria. Right now, America is protecting Al Qaeda’s main center throughout the world, which is the province of Idlib in Syria. This protection is part of a bigger picture, no merely isolated phenomenon.
For example: the key point of difference between the Obama Administration in America and the Putin Administration in Russia, regarding the establishment of a cease-fire in the Syrian war, was that Obama refused to allow Al Qaeda in Syria to be bombed during the proposed ceasefire, but Putin insisted that both Al Qaeda in Syria and ISIS in Syria must continue to be bombed during the ceasefire. Obama was protecting Al Qaeda in Syria, but Putin insisted upon bombing Al Qaeda and not only ISIS during any ceasefire there. (See the proof at that link, and you will also understand why Obama was protecting Al Qaeda in Syria.)
Right now, the U.S. Government and some of its allies are threatening to go to war against Russia if Russia will bomb the world’s highest concentration of Al Qaeda terrorists. Those terrorists are located in the only province of Syria that has always preferred Al Qaeda and ISIS to the Government of Syria’s secular President, Bashar al-Assad. That’s Idlib province, which now is Al Qaeda central, like Afghanistan used to be before 9/11 (and for which the U.S. bombed Afghanistan right after 9/11).
A 30 July 2017 speech makes this clear. The speech wasn’t given by an opponent or critic of the U.S. Government, but by a high official of the U.S. Government who speaks for the President of the United States on Syria and who has been doing this not only under Trump, but under Obama. This official is the neoconservative and rabidly anti-Assad and anti-Iranian and pro-Saudi and pro-Israeli Brett McGurk, who is U.S. President Trump’s Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, at the U.S. Department of State. He publicly acknowledged that “Idlib province is the largest Al Qaeda safe haven since 9/11, tied directly to Ayman al-Zawahiri. … Leaders of Al Qaeda who make their way to Idlib province often do not make their way out of there.” He acknowledges there that Idlib is like the pre-9/11 Afghanistan was.