This one is for anybody who believes Barack Obama was unaware that, far from being “virtually decimated” as he told voters during his 2012 re-election campaign, al-qaeda was strong, and growing.

Excerpted from Daniel Halper\’s article at weeklystandard.com which, in turn, quotes copiously from a Wall Street Journal article I don\’t have access to (subscriber-only):

White House provided 17 handpicked documents to the Combatting Terror Center at the West Point military academy, where a team of analysts reached the conclusion the Obama administration wanted. Bin Laden, they found, had been isolated and relatively powerless, a sad and lonely man sitting atop a crumbling terror network.

The White House provided 17 handpicked documents to the Combatting Terror Center at the West Point military academy, where a team of analysts reached the conclusion the Obama administration wanted. Bin Laden, they found, had been isolated and relatively powerless, a sad and lonely man sitting atop a crumbling terror network.

It was a reassuring portrayal. It was also wrong. And those responsible for winning the war-as opposed to an election-couldn\’t afford to engage in such dangerous self-delusion.

“The leadership down at Central Command wanted to know what were we learning from these documents,” says Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the transcript of an interview with Fox News anchor Bret Baier for a coming Fox News Reporting special. “We were still facing a growing al Qaeda threat. And it was not just Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iraq. But we saw it growing in Yemen. We clearly saw it growing still in East Africa.” The threat “wasn\’t going away,” he adds, “and we wanted to know: What can we learn from these documents?”

At precisely the time Mr. Obama was campaigning on the imminent death of al Qaeda, those with access to the bin Laden documents were seeing, in bin Laden\’s own words, that the opposite was true. Says Lt. Gen. Flynn: “By that time, they probably had grown by about-I\’d say close to doubling by that time. And we knew that”.

Translation:  When Barack Obama was telling us al-qaeda was virtually gone, it in fact was rapidly growing and strengthening. Which he damn well knew, but told us about al-qaeda\’s virtual demise anyway.

Does this surprise you?  And, if so, why? 

Does this man ever tell the truth about anything?

Less than two years to go before he is out of office (unless he uses his phone and pen to unilaterally declare a third term, that is).  I count the seconds.