Khorasan: Pentagon Says Fantasy Terror Group Bombed to Protect Homeland
Pentagon peddles debunked Khorasan myth
Now that Republicans have taken over Congress, and John McCain is about to hold court in the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, it’s time for the government to ramp up the war propaganda.
On Thursday Reuters reported a terror attack allegedly planned by the fictitious terror group Khorasan was thwarted by the Pentagon.
“We took decisive action to protect our interests and remove their capability to act,” U.S. Central Command said in a statement on Thursday.
The Khorasan bad guys, according to the government narrative, pose “a more direct and imminent threat to the United States” than the Islamic State and were dispatched to Syria by al-Qaeda boss Ayman al-Zawahiri to fight against arch nemesis – of the U.S., the Gulf Emirates and Israel – Bashar al-Assad.
Instead, supposed Khorasan militants “will provide these sophisticated explosives to their Western recruits who could sneak them onto U.S.-bound flights.”
Previous attempts attributed to al-Qaeda’s supposed master bomber, Ibrahim al-Asiri, resulted in the fizzle bomb unleashed by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, aka the Nigerian underwear bomber, and the cargo plane bombs allegedly discovered at the last minute by Saudi Arabia’s security boss on October 29, 2010.
For more on the overheated domestic terror threat posed by Khorasan, see our Khorasan: Toothpaste Bombers from Nowhere.
Khorasan, however, like its exaggerated explosives – including undetectable bombs inserted in the rectums of suicide bombers – does not exist.
“You haven’t heard of the Khorasan Group because there isn’t one,” writes Andrew C. McCarthy. “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.”
No one, that is, embedded in the corporate media. Almost from the start the alternative media has called foul on the Khorasan legend.
Many in the establishment media now sheepishly admit Khorasan is a ruse. Dogged Obama partisans, however, in particular Media Matters, follow the government script a bit more closely than their less partisan colleagues.
After denouncing reality – characterized as a conservative conspiracy – Alexandrea Boguhn writes for the New Democrat organization that “the intelligence community has been monitoring the Khorasan group for some time, and Obama himself has publicly acknowledged its ties to al Qaeda.”
It really is astounding how eager so-called New Democrats are to support the neocon war agenda and push propaganda fabrications they denounced when Bush was in office.