President Joe Biden is set to announce Monday that the U.S. has killed Al Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri, after slamming President Donald Trump when he announced that the U.S. had taken out ISIS and Iranian terrorist leaders in 2019 and 2020.
When Trump confirmed in October 2019 that U.S. special forces had found and killed ISIS founder and leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Biden did not offer simple congratulations, but said the operation had succeeded despite Trump’s “erratic” behavior
Former Vice President Joe Biden, a leading 2020 White House hopeful, said on Monday that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a U.S. military operation despite President Trump’s “ineptitude” as commander in chief.
“I’m glad President Trump ordered the mission,” Biden said in a statement. “But as more details of the raid emerge, it’s clear that this victory was not due to Donald Trump’s leadership. It happened despite his ineptitude as commander-in-chief.”
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“His erratic behavior made it harder and more dangerous for the special forces carrying it out. And they had to fly through territory that is now hostile to the U.S., taking fire along the way—including territory we controlled just weeks ago,” Biden said.
When Trump ordered the successful operation to take out Iranian terrorist general Qasem Soleimani in December 2020, Biden and the other Democrats running for president slammed the operation, saying that it make a Middle East war more likely:
Former Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s assertion he ordered a drone strike on Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani to avert an “imminent attack” can’t be taken at face value because the commander in chief has “lied so much.”
In an interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt, Biden, a Democratic presidential candidate, said of Trump, “I don’t give him the benefit of the doubt of anything.”
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Biden said the strike that killed Soleimani “takes us a heck of a lot closer to war. We’re putting 18,000 more troops in the region. Do we have — have they planned ahead of time to make sure they secure all the bases we have and all the areas that Americans are in fact more vulnerable because of proxies of Iraq — of Iran?”
Al-Zawahiri was apparently killed by a CIA drone in Afghanistan. Biden, suffering low approval ratings, is expected to benefit from the news, especially as the one-year anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan draws nearer.
Though the country was lost to the Taliban terrorists, amid fears of Al Qaeda’s return, and thirteen U.S. service members lost their lives in the chaotic evacuation, Biden promised that the U.S. would retain “over-the-horizon” capabilities there.
Al-Zawahiri took over Al Qaeda after U.S. forces eliminated Osama bin Laden in 2011. He was one of the most elusive terror figures in the world, and U.S. intelligence hunted in vain for him for many years until he was ultimately found and killed.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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