"America's Silent Threat" Part II

EDITORIAL COMMENT – The Editor in no way agrees with this article.

President Obama has been characterized as having filled the 3^rd and 4^th terms of the Bush Administration. There is no evidence 9/11 was carried out by any one in alignment with Iraq, the invasion was itself a violation of human rights and carried out because Iraq was about to sign treaties for oil with Russia and France.

Reaction to injustice, the death of a million and a half Iraqis and the destruction of their country is not a conspiracy.

Part II

by Nicholas J. Vocca

President Obama's recent statement that Al-Qaeda is on a "path to defeat" as the mission there has been successfully concluded, and that the war in Iraq never had anything to do with Al-Qaeda warrants some examination.

Various news sources report that during the month of May how over 1,000 Iraqis have been killed by car or suicide bombings and other violent attacks which are comparable to the worst days of the war.

Despite the facts that most of these killings do not make the evening news as often as when the war was on, and the withdrawal of coalition forces from that country, they are commonplace, and to say that Americans abroad are immune from any further hostile attacks by Al-Qaeda is certainly misleading.

Because U.S. intelligence strongly suspects that there were about one-dozen Al-Qaeda operatives inside the core group of those assailants who attacked and killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans on a diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, some pundits covering this reign of terror may be proper when saying these brutal murders could be considered as four additional Al-Qaeda kills related to Iraq.

In his claim that the Al-Nusra Front "is just Al-Qaeda in Iraq operating under a new name", United States Ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford, gives some credibility to the expressed theory that Al-Qaeda's real mission is focused on taking over that country entirely.

Emerging as a Syrian arm of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Al-Nusra Front supplied foreign fighters for the Iraq war, and along with making the hostilities more treacherous and bloody, it has essentially become the biggest success story of Al-Qaeda to date.

As a response to Al-Qaeda's April announcement of an Islamic state composed of Iraq and Syria, Al-Nusra pledged its allegiance to Al-Qaeda, with claims that they are a transitional Salafist front, and not a Syrian independence movement.

It is understandable how the support and concerns over what happens in Iraq today has greatly waned after a decade of fighting which has left several thousand troops dead and thousands of others wounded, but is this trend one with sound reason, or a victory where Al-Qaeda and its allies want us to fall asleep?

May it also be said that what happens with Al-Qaeda in Iraq, Benghazi, and Syria is not solely limited to those countries?

Iraqi authorities on June 1 reported raiding three workshops where Sarin nerve gas and other chemical weapons were being manufactured, and arrested five men who confessed how they were involved in a massive plot where they received instructions on to construct these weapons which would then be smuggled through an intricate pipeline into Europe, and the United States.

Turkish authorities also reported having made similar arrests of an Al-Nusra Front cell found to have their own stockpiles of Sarin gas, followed after by another report from Syrian authorities that they uncovered a plot in that country.

Sarin gas bombs are rightfully considered Weapons of Mass Destruction, as 0.5 milligrams has been proven to be a lethal dose for an adult.

Though it has been confirmed that the Al-Nusra Front had kilograms of Sarin gas, which it used to manufacture an undetermined supply of crude WMD's, the current Syrian government is reported to have about 1,000 tons of it, thereby raising the threats significantly that both Al-Qaeda and the Al-Nusra Front could eventually carry out their plot successfully as they progress in seizing more Syrian bases and facilities.

Speaking about the war during his address to students at the National Defense University on Thursday, May 23, President Obama stated the war must end, and implied how America can accomplish this by taking a more passive role its involvement.

This reasoning has drawn the deep scrutiny of some critics who feel that the good intentions of the Obama Administration are wrong, and how, by its negligence of not remembering the past, history will repeat itself with far more devastating consequences for America and all peace-loving nations.

Their general beliefs are that this war was not started by America being aggressive, but because it took a passive route where "it found refuge in the cult of root causes," as opposed to dealing directly and immediately with threats.

Citing how the Clinton Administration decided against taking down Osama Bin Laden when it had open opportunities to do so, but instead opted to employ outreach and "smart" targeted strikes, one critic expressed the opinion that this error proved to be a fatal one by claiming how the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon was the outcome of that Administration's neglect.

The biggest mistake made by the Clinton Administration, according to the critic, was how it believed in showing the Muslims that we would engage in humanitarian intervention as a way of empowering their national aims in Yugoslavia, with the hopes it would count more than hunting down Bin Laden.

Both Washington, D.C., and many Americans, have predominantly forgotten about Iraq since the troop pull outs and went on with their lives believing that that country's Al-Qaeda legions have done the same about us, and have no  conceptions how the Sarin gas raids in Iraq, Turkey, and Syria could be a clear and evident indication how Al-Qaeda today is more a threat us than ever before.

Could the Arab Spring and Turkish Summer be preludes to an American Fall?