Al-Qaeda propaganda: Are we really this stupid?

I was in my senior year of high school when 9/11 happened. Al-Qaeda was behind the attack, and we were now at war. I joined the Army and served in American special operations units in Iraq and Afghanistan. There, I got to see the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other jihadi militants up close, confirming beyond any shadow of a doubt that these guys are scumbags. I got out of the Army in 2010, but the war continued on. ISIS was born. Things got worse.

The war mutated, and to my shock, horror, and disbelief, our government and news media were soon telling us that al-Qaeda was our friend. They didn’t come right out and say it, although General Petraeus openly advocated arming al-Qaeda. Think tanks carefully couch their words, as does the CIA, when it refers to so-called “moderate” opposition in Syria. Our press freely and willfully accepts propaganda from “activists” in rebel/jihadi-held areas of Syria.

We have short memories in America. Let’s set aside the fact that we were told that al-Qaeda was our eternal enemy after 9/11 and look back to the Gulf War. In 1990, a 15-year-old girl named Nayirah testified in front of Congress, telling our lawmakers a shocking story in which she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers in Kuwait removing babies from incubators in a hospital, and then leaving them to die. There was one problem with her story: It was pure bullshit.