Alwaght- Michael T. Flynn, the retired head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, says that US deliberately decided to support the al-Qaeda affiliated groups in Syria despite warnings about creation of a terrorist entity like ISIS.

It is a popular conception in the West Asian countries that the ISIS Terrorist group is and has been supported by the US on various levels.

The common mass of these countries, most affected by the terror of the ISIS aggressions, believe that the group was created or at least utilized by western countries, the US in particular, to achieve their political goals.

The recent attack by the US led coalition on Syrian forces that killed 80 soldiers and helped the ISIS terrorists to retake a strategic position in the southern Dier Ezzor region, was the latest blatant case of such supports.

Although the US authorities and their allies have always rejected the issue, interestingly it is not only popular in the region but also many former and present figures and officials both inside the US and other western countries have reaffirmed the US support for the ISIS terrorists.

Michael Springmann, who retired from US State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, is one of the diplomats raising the issue. In his new book, Springmann writes that the US covert operations in alliance with West Asian states funding anti-Western terrorist groups are nothing new. Such operations, he shows, have been carried out for various short-sighted reasons since the Cold War and after that.

After the end of the Cold War, Springmann alleged, similar operations continued in different contexts for different purposes?—?in the former Yugoslavia, Libya and elsewhere. The rise of ISIS, he contends, was a predictable outcome of this counterproductive policy.

The book establishes a crucial context for recent admissions by Michael T. Flynn, the retired head of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), confirming that White House officials made a “willful decision” to support al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists in Syria?—?despite being warned by the DIA that doing so would likely create an ‘ISIS’-like entity in the region.

In an interview with the English Al-Jazeera TV, Flynn said that ISIS was the direct result of US support for the Syrian militants whose main core was formed by Iraqi al-Qaeda.

Daniel McAdams, from Ron Paul Institute was also one of the figures to reveal the support by saying that “the US help the rise of ISIS not for ideological, but for tactical reasons … they supported the group to destabilize Syria because Washington wanted [President] Assad gone”.

Another case for the US support for the terrorist groups came in a report in Insurge Intelligence site that cited a leaked state document that showed a secret alliance of western governments with al-Qaeda and other extremist groups to topple the Syrian Bashar Assad.

The report says such documents prove that the West, in complacency with the [Persian] Gulf States and Turkey, deliberately backed violent groups in Syria fighting to establish a “Salafi” state in Damascus.

Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, was the most vocal in reiterating the issue by directly addressing the President Barak Obama for the support his government paid to extremist Salafi groups that evolved into ISIS terrorist group later.

The aforementioned US attack on Syrian army further assured many around the world about the Washington support for the ISIS terrorists as Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Rossiya 24 “If previously we had suspicions that Al-Nusra Front is protected this way, now, after today's airstrikes on the Syrian army we come to a really terrifying conclusion for the entire world: The White House is defending ISIS.”

A further proof was presented by the chief of the Russian Reconciliation Center in Syria, Lieutenant General Vladimir Savchenko who said "Immediately after the airstrike by coalition planes, Islamic State militants launched their offensive.”

In its “Evaluation of Embassy Baghdad’s Implementation of Line of Effort” the Office of the US Inspector General mentioned that about 40 percent of Iraqis believe Washington is destabilizing their country to take control of their natural resources while 30 percent believe the US is supporting terrorism in their country.

The famous American columnist, Seymour Hersh in his “The Redirection” published in the New Yorker writes to undermine Iran, the Bush Administration decided to reconfigure its priorities in the West Asia. In Lebanon, the Administration cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran.

The US has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally, Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouses a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

The director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan, General William Odom was another top official to confess the issue by saying “by any measure the U.S. has long used terrorism. In 1978-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the U.S. would be in violation.”

The British Guardian newspaper in a report by Seumas Milne wrote “reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime.”

By Al Waght