US May Use Arab Spring as Scapegoat for War on Terror - FBI Whistleblower

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The turmoil caused by the Arab Spring in the Middle East may be used by US intelligence agencies as a handy distraction to point blame away from the War on Terror, former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley told Sputnik.

“The ‘Arab Spring’ would be nothing but a convenient scapegoat to point the blame away from the post 9-11 ‘War on Terror,’ but no more accurate [excuse] than the prior official explanation that ‘they hate our freedom’,” Rowley said on Tuesday in commenting the upcoming book by former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Deputy Director Michael Morell.

In the book, Morell argued US intelligence failed to anticipate that al-Qaeda would take advantage of the political turmoil in the Middle East during the Arab Spring, enabling the terrorist group to regain strength despite the killing of its leader Osama bin Laden in 2011.

Rowley said she would applaud Morell for admitting how badly the CIA and the other US intelligence agencies misjudged the increasing danger posed by al-Qaeda and the various “Islamic State hydras” that have appeared throughout the region.

The FBI whistleblower noted, however, that the violent chaos in the Middle East started only partly because of the Arab Spring. She argued the crises in the region are a result of the “deceit that went into launching pre-emptive, illegal US wars,” as well as because of the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and the destruction of their infrastructures.

Rowley underscored the destructive nature of the United States’ covert activities to achieve regime change through destabilization, torture, kidnappings, indefinite detentions and drone assassinations carried out in the War on Terror.

Arming Saudi Arabia and other countries, while turning a blind eye to their support for al-Qaeda groups, she said, similarly contributed to the turmoil in the Middle East.

The expert also noted that the trust the United States put in the overall efforts to bring democracy, human rights and peace to the region was “naive, but totally ridiculous.”

Moreover, she said, the actions to assassinate terrorist leaders and insurgents has helped fuel terrorist groups' recruitment and thus has promoted terrorism, she added.

Rowley concluded that US intelligence agencies should have drawn conclusions from the War on Drugs, which showed that taking out drug kingpins merely served to increase the flow and lower the price of illegal drugs in the United States.