Three years down the line, under an ongoing US-backed rebel supply and training operation, the Saudis, Turks and Qataris are continuing the same strategy that generated ISIS, by openly sponsoring an "Islamist-dominated rebel alliance" in Syria, in which the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra front is the major player.
"It is unlikely we are going to operate side by side with cadres from Nusra, but if our allies are working with them, that is acceptable," said former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Adm. James Stavrids. The US is likely to go "pretty far" in terms of engaging with that coalition."
In reality, little has changed since the good old days driving the Soviets from Afghanistan.
Given bin Laden's increasing hostility toward any sort of accommodation with the Americans before his death, the al-Qaeda founder may well be turning in his grave at the actions of his successor.
The assassination of bin Laden has paved the way for the complete opposite of bin Laden's grand vision of crumbling Muslim regimes overtaken by populist "Islamic governments." Instead, his death has heralded the resurgence of a new geopolitical alliance between the West, the Gulf regimes, Turkey, and al-Qaeda.
It is therefore not surprising that to this day, successive US governments continue to systematically downplay the extent to which the governments of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have deliberately fostered the infrastructure and support network for Osama bin Laden's Islamist terrorist activity"--"much of which has occurred while in receipt of extensive Western financial and military aid.
As noted above, just before publishing its report in 2004, the 9/11 Commission received a confidential document from a high-level "unimpeachable source" in Pakistan. The report, commissioned by Zelikow, was damning:
"The imprints of every major act of international Islamist terrorism invariably passes through Pakistan, right from 9/11"--"where virtually all the participants had trained, resided or met in, coordinated with, or received funding from or through Pakistan"--"to major acts of terrorism across South Asia and Southeast Asia, as well as major networks of terror that have been discovered in Europe."
The document went so far as to reveal that repeated claims about bin Laden's premature death could be traced back to ISI disinformation, put out to deflect attention from the agency's complicity in harbouring and promoting al-Qaeda:
"ISI has consistently sought to deny the presence of al-Qaida elements in Pakistan, and to mislead US investigators" This deception has been at the very highest level, and Musharraf himself, for instance, initially insisted he was 'certain' bin Laden was dead."
Musharraf, of course, according to former ISI chief Gen. Ziauddin Butt, was responsible for approving bin Laden's protection at the Abbottabad compound under the jurisdiction of Brig. Ijaz Shah and the Pakistani Intelligence Bureau.
"ISI issues money and directions to militant groups, specially the Arab hijackers of 9/11 from al-Qaida. ISI was fully involved in devising and helping the entire affair. And that is why people like Hamid Gul and others very quickly stated the propaganda that CIA and Mossad did it."
The report noted that although bin Laden was very much alive, reports of his being ill are accurate. The terror chief suffered "from renal deficiency [and] has been periodically undergoing dialysis in a Peshawar military hospital with the knowledge and approval of ISI if not of Gen. Pervez Musharraf himself."
The source of the report even speculated: "Musharraf may be planning to turn over bin Laden to President Bush in time to clinch his reelection bid in November."
Thus, in 2004, the US government-appointed commission to investigate 9/11"--"staffed with former and active government and intelligence advisors"--"received startling information that Musharraf and the ISI were not only harbouring bin Laden and fabricating reports of his death, but were willing to hand him over to the US to aid with political point-scoring.
To this day, this unpublished 9/11 Commission addendum on Pakistan remains classified.
The US record on Saudi Arabia is equally damning. The infamous classified 28 pages of the 2002 Congressional Inquiry Report into 9/11 has been described by the inquiry's co-chair Senator Bob Graham as providing shocking confirmation of the role of senior Saudi officials in not just sponsoring al-Qaeda, but providing specific financial support to the 9/11 hijackers and the operation itself. This January, he told a press conference:
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