http://www.newsmax.com/PrintTemplate.aspx/?nodeid=628579Newsmax
Lt. Gen. Flynn: Obama Claim al-Qaida on Run Off Base
Thursday, March 5, 2015 07:56 PM
By: Greg Richter
The claims made by President Barack Obama during his 2012 re-election campaign that al-Qaida was "on the run" did not match the information Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was seeing as Defense Intelligence Agency director, he told Fox News.
In an interview recorded this week and aired Thursday on Fox News Channel's "Special Report," Flynn told host Bret Baier that documents recovered in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden showed that al-Qaida was gaining ground.
Flynn left his position last year.
Flynn told Fox News that the "facts" he saw showed that the size, scale and numbers of organizations were increasing and that there was a "thickening of lines between different groups" in Pakistan, Yemen, East Africa, Maghreb, and Mali.
"So who is briefing the president? How does he get to those sentences?" Baier asked.
"For me to sit here and tell you why he says what he says, I don't know," Flynn said. "What I know, the intelligence said was not necessarily what we hear."
Baier suggested the facts were diametrically opposed to what Obama said.
"I would say from my perspective, it was just the opposite," Flynn agreed. "You can't sit here and say that al-Qaida was defeated when we're still looking at elements of al-Qaida that are conducting operations."
Baier quoted Obama from a May 1, 2012, speech in which he said, "The goal that I set to defeat al-Qaida and deny it a chance to rebuild is now within our reach."
Flynn said that goal still isn't within reach.
"I can't sit here and tell you that we are," he said.
