The Obama Administration’s policy of supporting Salafist opposition to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad saw the United States unwittingly support the creation of the Daesh 'caliphate' in Syria.
A 2012 defense intelligence report, originally stamped SECRET exposes that the US-backed anti-Assad coalition at the time was spearheaded by al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) that soon after cobbled together to form the Daesh terror network.
The report exposes that while the United States refused to directly aide and support AQI and ISI pursuant to restrictions imposed by domestic anti-terror laws, State Department and Pentagon officials were well aware that the so-called ‘moderate’ rebels were intertwined with the terrorist militants who were the vanguard of the fighting force. Somewhat fantastically, the United States finds itself in a similar predicament in its anti-Assad proxy war vis-à-vis another former al-Qaeda affiliate, al-Nusra Front.
"AQI, through the spokesman of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), Abu Muhammad al-Adnani… is calling on the Sunnis in Iraq, especially the tribes in the border regions (between Iraq and Syria), to wage war against the Syrian regime," said the report.
