Our Iraqi al-Qaeda Enemy Springs Our Syrian al-Qaeda Ally from Prison

Our Iraqi al-Qaeda Enemy Springs Our Syrian al-Qaeda Ally from Prison

Posted By Andrew C. McCarthy On July 24, 2013

The Guardian reports that al-Qaeda has just carried out bombing raids at two Iraqi prisons, freeing hundreds of prisoners, many of them jihadist fighters affiliated with the terror network.

Hakim al-Zamili, a member of the security and defense committee in Iraq’s parliament concedes that “the number of escaped inmates has reached 500. Most of them were convicted senior members of al-Qaeda and had received death sentences.”

With U.S. combat forces having evacuated — and after American taxpayers expended tens of billions of dollars on our government’s dream of erecting an “Islamic democracy” that would be a reliable American counterterrorism ally — Iraq is sliding into full-blown civil war. That is the default condition between the majority Shiite and minority Sunni populations absent a credible military force that keeps them from savaging one another. Just this month, the Guardian report notes, “nearly 600 people have been killed in militant attacks across Iraq.” And with Americans having been smeared by Islamic supremacists as being “at war with Islam,” it is worth noting that these attacks, carried out during Ramadan, prominently target mosques.

It is also worth noting that many of the Sunni terrorists who have been broken out of prison were captured by U.S. forces, particularly during the troop surge that was sold to Americans as necessary to avoid a humiliating al Qaeda victory in Iraq. Now those al-Qaeda enemies of ours are free once more to continue their Iraqi civil war in what they call the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.” But observe that if these same jihadists manage to cross the border into Syria — which is also part of their Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — they somehow transmogrify into “rebels,” our noble allies in the Syrian civil war against Assad.

There’s a coherent, carefully thought out policy, no?

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