‘Neocon Lies’: Ron Paul Claims Iraq War Created Al Qaeda

Former Texas Congressman Ron Paul is taking a healthy online flogging for his tweet about the origins of terror group Al-Qaeda.

“Remember,” the libertarian firebrand wrote as he watched President Donald Trump’s Monday night speech on Afghanistan, “there was no al-Qaeda until our foolish invasion of Iraq based on neocon lies.”

Remember: there was no al-Qaeda until our foolish invasion of Iraq based on neocon lies.

— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) August 22, 2017

Paul has long been critical of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, spearheaded by the hegemony-fetishists in President George W. Bush’s administration.

But Paul’s latest critique of the war contains a glaring factual error: Al-Qaeda existed long before 2003 (Remember, Ron: the group orchestrated the September 11, 2001 terror attacks that supposedly justified the invasion of Iraq…)

Osama bin Laden actually formed the terrorist organization, dubbed Al-Qaeda, in 1988 during the Soviet War in Afghanistan — a conflict between Soviet armies and the U.S.-backed Afghan mujahideen.

The group was created by bin Laden and other prominent members of the mujahideen, who would go on to conduct a number of terror attacks around the world in the 1990s, with the successful attack on New York’s World Trade Center coming in 2001 — followed swiftly by the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan after the country’s Taliban regime failed to hand over bin Laden.

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Aidan McLaughlin (@aidnmclaughlin) on Twitter

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