Below is a transcript of this segment:
Tonight go in-depth on something the media has once again failed to investigate, and that is this, the Khorasan Group. Who is this? Why did the president go after them?
We have an answer, and again, it is a theory, but remember, my theory was that you are being lied to in great detail on Benghazi. I think this is going to fall into the same thing. I have an answer that nobody else does. I want you to know again, it is a theory. I’m thinking out loud here, but let’s start with last week. The president last week announced airstrikes against a terrorist organization called the Khorasan Group. I reacted like most Americans—the who? The what? Who?
VIDEOPresident Obama: Last night, we also took strikes to disrupt plotting against the United States and our allies by seasoned Al Qaeda operatives in Syria who are known as the Khorasan Group. Once again, it must be clear to anyone who would plot against America and try to do Americans harm that we will not tolerate safe havens for terrorists who threaten our people.
Okay, I want to talk you about the Khorasan Group here for just a second here. I had never heard of them, so tonight I want to answer this question: Why did we bomb them? Who are they? Who is being helped by us taking them out? Is anybody besides us? What can history teach us about Khorasan? And are there any connections to this, the president said he is organizing the Middle East, and then he also refuses to recognize what Isis is recognizing, and that is the Sykes-Picot Treaty?
Sykes-Picot Treaty is extraordinarily important. I know some of your friends might even say, “Oh, that’s ridiculous. Stop talking about Sykes-Picot.” They’re the same people who said Woodrow Wilson doesn’t matter. I’m telling you, Sykes-Picot is the key to understanding the Middle East.
Okay, so why did we do this? No U.S. official had ever publicly mentioned the Khorasan Group until the days leading up to the president’s big announcement of the airstrikes, but suddenly this mysterious group presents an imminent threat to the United States.
VIDEOLt. Gen. William C. Mayville Jr.: In terms of the Khorasan Group, which is a network of seasoned Al Qaeda veterans, these strikes were undertaken to disrupt imminent attack plotting against the United States and Western targets.
An imminent threat. Now, it’s really odd that this never-heard-of-before group suddenly poses an imminent threat so we have to go and bomb them that night. Homeland Security officials have been consistently adamant that even ISIS didn’t pose a threat to the homeland, so why does the Khorasan Group, an affiliate of Al Qaeda that he himself said Al Qaeda is over? It’s suddenly such a threat that it poses more of a threat to the homeland than ISIS.
The president addresses the nation, forcefully says we’re going to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIS but not mentioning the even-more-dangerous terror group called Khorasan. Doesn’t make sense, does it? So what’s happening?
ABC’s Jon Karl was perplexed. He said, “Extraordinary—military strikes against a group no WH official had ever publicly mentioned by name.” And then it just goes away. In a piece for the National Review, our friend of the program, really smart guy, Andrew McCarthy, he goes on, and he’s talking in this. He asserts that there is really no good reason why we have never heard of them.
He says, “You haven’t heard of the Khorasan Group because there isn’t one. It is a name the administration came up with, calculating that Khorasan—the Iranian-Afghan border region—had sufficient connection to jihadist lore that no one would call the president on it…The ‘Khorasan Group’ is Al Qaeda. It is simply a faction within the global terror network’s Syrian franchise, ‘Jabhat al-Nusra.’”
Okay. Our friend of the program—I happen to disagree with him, I think, on this—Andrew McCarthy, contends that it is part of Obama’s strategy to make Americans see the jihad movement not as a powerful ideologically connected network that seeks to destroy the West but rather a small bunch of isolated groups of crazies. That makes sense if you understand this, if you listen to what the president always says—oh, it was just a lone wolf, just a lone wolf.
Remember, the radical Islamic terrorists have nothing to do with Islam. See deleting radical Islam from terror training manuals, Eric Holder refusing to say radical Islamic terrorists, even head of the CIA saying, you know, we’re not going against terror because terror is a tactic, all of that stuff, but it goes deeper than that.
Glenn Greenwald wrote…do we have it? Where is it? There it is. “The Fake Terror Threat Used to Justify Bombing Syria.” In the article, he shows that just days before the airstrikes, the administration leaks information on Khorasan to the press in an attempt to soften the ground. Well, the press laps it up. The Associated Press, CBS News, New York Times eagerly are taking this propaganda and spewing it out on the American public. So once the bombings began, the rest of the press, told of this brand-new dangerous threat to the homeland, they immediately go, and everything’s fine. Greenwald lists several, including NBC, CNN, and the Washington Post.
So now the administration had created the scenario that the bombings had to take place in order to save your life to the homeland, a group that nobody had ever heard of—convenient, but the introduction of Khorasan goes much, much deeper than that. The president didn’t need a big justification to go after ISIS. Why did he go after this guy? Because polls show two thirds of Americans support military action against these guys who are in Syria, right? So he doesn’t need to do that. So what gives?
Let’s look at history. Where is Khorasan? What is ISIS and ISIL? What are they fighting for? The Khorasan fighters, does that match what ISIS and ISIL? And what is Iran’s desire? Let me start here. In the aftermath of 9/11, intelligence gathering efforts on Al Qaeda were obviously ramped up. Not long after, we start to see a picture of a very shadowy organization, and it begins to emerge and what their goals and what their reasons are behind them.
And they are scattered all around. We think of Al Qaeda just over here in Afghanistan in the caves, but that’s not true. They were mobilizing to become a global movement, and they would scour the Middle East. And they were looking for where there were historic reasons to be—that’s really important—and where unrest and instability existed, and so they set up shop.
So they start with the Taliban over here. They also go all over, pop up all over the Middle East. The attacks are carried out in northern Africa. You start to see them in this area. You start to see them in Yemen. You start to see them in northern Saudi Arabia and also another one, a very small one over here. This is the Khorasan area. This is a really important area. So there’s Khorasan. Got it?
Historically speaking, it’s a province of Khorasan, and it is the birthplace of modern Persian culture. Khorasan was a province in the caliphate, another crazy word, that existed between 600 and 700 A.D. It’s important that you understand the caliphate. The caliphate that Khorasan belonged to looked like this. It went all across the Middle East, okay, into Tunisia. Now, does this map look familiar to a chalkboard that I might have drawn oh, in times past? That’s the original caliphate that Khorasan was a part of.
Now, there’s an old Islamic hadith—a hadith is a written tradition or a prophecy—and in the prophecy it says that an Islamic army will rise up from Khorasan, right here, and it will fight, and it will restore the entire caliphate map. Again, radical Islamic terrorists do not recognize the current lines, not even Iran’s. What are these lines? The map lines that you are seeing here that I am going to erase are the map lines that we talked about last week.
This is something that you must get your friends to understand. These map lines according to these people do not exist at all. Why? Because these map lines were originally drawn by the West. They were drawn by the French and the English, and those lines are called Sykes-Picot. So that is what this map looks like. There are no borders in this map. It’s one giant border.
And so when you see Al Qaeda, and they’re named different things, you know, Al Qaeda, al-Shabaab, and I don’t know all the names of them, but they’re in different regions. Why? Because they are working on this area of responsibility, this area of responsibility, this area of responsibility, and they bleed out, get stronger, and then tie it all together in the end.
So naturally because this is what they’re going for, and they are the “wrong kind” of Muslims for the Iranians, the Iranian government views Khorasan as a massive threat, because let me show you something else, Iran…Iran currently is here. This is Iran. But remember, Iranians, they believe in the 12th Imam. The 12th Imam is supposed to crawl out of a well, and he’s supposed to come. They’ve already got a road built, and he supposed to come from his little well—I’m wishing, I’m wishing—and then he crawls out, and he goes down this road, and he comes to a place here in Iraq.
And then what does he do? He takes and he makes a caliphate in the region as well, and their caliphate—well, I just made fun of the 12th Imam, and that’s what’s happening—their caliphate is something like this as well, but they have to kill all the wrong Muslims. The Sunnis have to kill the Shias, and the Shias have to kill the Sunnis. It depends which one gets the caliphate.
So now that we have this little background, let’s look at what the administration did suddenly to include Khorasan as a threat. What happened? What has the administration been trying to accomplish recently? Remember, the president said they are organizing the Middle East. John Kerry made it very clear and said you know what we have to do? We want to work with Iran. We want to get Iran together with us and help, and they didn’t rule out the possibility of joint military operations. Watch.
VIDEOSec. of State Kerry: Look, we’re open to discussions if there’s something constructive that can be contributed by Iran if Iran is prepared to do something that is going to respect the integrity and sovereignty of Iraq and the ability of the government to reform.
Okay, all right, so we want to work with Iran. What? They’re enemies. What are you talking about? Why would they do that? Well, a very good reason…why is Iran a proxy in Syria? Member, they have Hezbollah. Hezbollah is here in Syria. This is a proxy state. Assad is being propped up by Iran, because Iran, remember, wants to push this way. They’re going to push this way, and they’ll push through the area of Iraq into Syria, and Hezbollah is pushing down this way.
So when you have the Khorasan Group, remember, the Khorasan Group is here. Well, wait a minute, did we bomb them here? No. The Khorasan Group was relocated here because they’re against Iran. They’ve got to stop the proxy. They’ve got to stop Iran and Hezbollah over here. It’s a civil war. It’s a religious civil war, if you will. It’s the Sunnis and the Shias going after.
Now, it’s no secret, the administration desperately sought Iran’s partnership against ISIS. They refused. In fact, the head of Iran laughed from the hospital at the Secretary John Kerry and Obama. But wait a minute, we said we bombed these people. Why did we bomb these people? What happened? What else happened last week here in New York?
Iranian officials were here in New York for negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program. There is a deadline on that, November 24. Both the U.S. and the Iranian officials share optimism, and I know I do too, that a deal remains possible. Oh, it’s absolutely…sure, sure, uh huh. Talks were reportedly starting slow, with Iran wanting the Obama administration to show more flexibility.
By Friday, after five days of American bombing on this little-known terror cell called Khorasan, hope in a deal suddenly improved. Khorasan, by all accounts other than the administration’s sudden revelation, is no bigger of a threat to America than ISIS is. In fact, there are many, many threats in the Middle East that are bigger, several Al Qaeda cells worth striking ahead of Khorasan.
Khorasan may not be a threat to the U.S., but they are a very big deal to Iran. That’s what happened. The president extended the olive branch to Iran. We killed their enemy. Our enemy, we left them alone over here. We didn’t care about Al Qaeda, Khorasan-Al Qaeda. We didn’t care about them because this was our enemy, and so let them destabilize that. That’ll be good. We’ll just use that, and we’ll kill them later.
But now we need Iran, and so when they moved over here, we said they’re a big threat. No, they’re not. We’ve known about them for a long, long time. They’re no threat. This was a gift to the Iranians. He would never be able to say that we’re openly working with the Iranians—politically devastating here and abroad. Iran wouldn’t be able to say they’re working with America. That would invite an avalanche of terrorism in their own land, revenge for siding with the great Satan and betraying the Middle East.
Here’s the thing I want you to know, we are never, ever, ever going to win this war if we don’t understand a few things. One, the enemy of my enemy is not our friend. It doesn’t work that way. Is Iran good? Is Al Qaeda-Khorasan good? Was Mubarak good? Is Syria, what’s his name, Assad good? Was Muammar Gaddafi? None of them are good. Saudi Arabia, are they good? No.
Why would we side with Saudi Arabia who are oppressing women and homosexuals? To keep them at bay? These guys are oppressing women and homosexuals too. This is insanity. They are not our friends. None of them are our friends. There is one friend, and they are right here, and it’s the state of Israel. That’s the only friend, and we keep betraying those people. Why? Because we’re looking at this all upside down.
Iran, we said Iran was our enemy so we let Khorasan just leave it alone. Then ISIS became a bigger enemy, and so Iran, we need them as a friend, so let’s kill Iran’s enemy, Khorasan. What do you think’s going to happen? Do you think that works out for us? Does that make us look like we know what we’re doing, like we’re decent people, that we have any principles whatsoever? No.
Two, we’re repeating the same mistakes because we have short or no vision. By playing the old game, we’re only making it worse every time. Three, we have to reconcile the past. Sykes-Picot is the problem. They are trying to reboot the whole Middle East. It is slipping through our fingers because it was never right in the first place.
Why are we defending borders that we have no place even putting those borders in place? Let them kill each other. I know it sounds horrible, but this is insanity. If you can come up with a better strategy that recognizes that we have to reconcile the past, and it’s rooted in principles, and we can save people, I’m willing to hear. I’m absolutely willing to hear it. But Sykes-Picot is the root of the problem here. It’s not our wealth. It’s not our religion. It’s nothing.
They want their caliphate, period. And four, the intel that the president is getting is either foolish, it’s criminal, or it’s both. Yesterday, the president came out—I’m amazed by this—the president came out yesterday…this man can’t take responsibility for a damn thing. He came out yesterday and said hey, I just want you to know, it’s not really my fault. It was bad intelligence. Mr. President, I’m begging you, if you really believe that, if that’s true, then fire those people who have been so wrong in the past.
If somebody has given me this kind of information and has been this wrong for this long, I don’t even have to fire them; they tender their resignation because they’re humiliated. When are you going to start firing people and put people in that know what they’re talking about? Hell, the guy who has his own stupid cable TV show, he knows more than your advisors do. I’m available for consultation. I won’t charge you anything. More on this theory coming up in just a second.
The American people are waking up. They no longer see Washington as a place that protects liberty. They want to be part of the solution, but they don’t necessarily see a solution out there. The politicians in Washington are ignoring the voice of we the people. That’s why I encourage you to join FreedomWorks in the fight to take back our freedoms to hold onto them because we’re the ones that are going to do it. It’s not going to be some clown in Washington.