In the lead-up to last year’s reelection, President Obama centered his foreign policy campaign on the idea of his having “decimated” al-Qaeda and left the group “on the run,” but not only was the claim untrue, Obama had been repeatedly briefed during the campaign season on that fact.
All through summer and fall of 2012, US intelligence officials repeatedly briefed Obama and the rest of the leadership on the fact that al-Qaeda was growing, and that the group’s African auxiliaries had been successfully fundraising with an eye toward attacking Western interests.
Administration officials refused to publicly comment on the matter, insisting that all of the intelligence given to the president was secret, but off-the-record many of them confirmed the story.
The scandal around this centers primarily on the president’s use of patently untrue claims in his reelection campaign, though of course many were already pointing that fact out at the time. It is rather just another in a long line of the administration’s deliberate misleading of the public, and whether it’s for the sake of election or war, that’s been a virtual constant.
Jason, you still haven't internalised the fact that AQ is entirely phony. Read Kurt Nimmo. He invented the useful mnemonic 'al-CIA-duh' about ten years ago.
This does not surprise me. The US, like other regimes, have a history of telling lies to its people. One that sticks out for me is the Gulf of Tonkin 'Ghosts' attack. The US claimed its destroyers came under attack from a couple of North Vietnam 'sanpans'. President Johnson used this incident as an excuse to expand the US role in Southeast Asia. It ultimately dragged into the Vietnam War.