1115.org

It’s worse than anyone could possibly have imagined. The friends of our worst enemy have finally become our friends. And we’re not just breaking bread with them. We’re financing them. According to Seymour Hersh writing in The New Yorker, the U.S. government has been covertly funneling money to Sunni extremists who are connected to al Qaeda. This is part of an “effort by the Bush administration to stem the growth of Shiite influence in the Middle East (specifically the Iranian government and Hezbollah in Lebanon)”.

Hersh says the U.S. has been “pumping money, a great deal of money, without congressional authority, without any congressional oversight” for covert operations in the Middle East where it wants to “stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence.” Hersh says these funds have ended up in the hands of “three Sunni jihadist groups” who are “connected to al Qaeda” but “want to take on Hezbollah.”

Hersh summed up his scoop in stark terms: “We are simply in a situation where this president is really taking his notion of executive privilege to the absolute limit here, running covert operations, using money that was not authorized by Congress, supporting groups indirectly that are involved with the same people that did 9/11.”

Hersh’s New Yorker article (rather long and rambling) can be found here.