America is at war with radical Islam “whether you want to admit it or not, because they've declared war on us,” Gen. Paul Vallely insisted Tuesday during a Newsmax interview, saying the White House is “in total denial” about terror activities.
“They are in total denial about radical Islam, about what happened in Boston, about what happened in Benghazi,” Vallely told Newsmax TV. “It’s a continued trip down the road of deception and lies so it’s got to be by design. It just is not occurring that they’re trying to obviate everything.”
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Editor's Note: Iran Will Have Nuclear Weapon By 2014 — Watch Urgent Briefing Now!
Vallely is the former commanding general of the Pacific Command and the founder of the Syrian Opposition Liaison Group, created with the Free Syrian Army and Stand-Up America. He admitted there are some lawmakers making moves on Islamist terrorism, but more needs to be done.
For example, he pointed to the ongoing situation in Israel, where the government accused the neighboring Assad regime in Syria of using chemical weapons on its own people. “It is a trend of this administration to ignore the facts and move [to] their own drummer of what their agenda may be,” he said.
Vallely noted that he visited Syria almost eight months ago, and observed a commander of the Free Syrian Army who had been exposed to a chemical attack.
“I looked at the effects of chlorine gas not only on his feet, but also it creates a burn on the skin that’s red and I observed that, so I asked him what happened and he said, ‘Well, what they’re doing now is spraying chlorine gas on the civilian populations in Aleppo.’”
He said he also received photos from the Canadian medial liaison team of victims who were taken to the hospital after gas attacks.
“That was in July of last year, and in my last trip over on the Syrian border in November they also had an attack at that time,” he said. “Here’s the frustration here, I’ve been reporting this since last July.”
But he said President Barack Obama’s administration refuses to accept credible reports coming out of Syria.
“The facts are out there and even the United Nations knows what’s happening over there,” Vallely said. “It’s very factual. All you have to do is visit on the ground, visit with the Syrian opposition groups there and the people have been on the ground inside the border to know this is a fact.”
The general said the Boston Marathon bombings and subsequent arrest is another example of how the United States has failed to be ahead of the game when it comes to terrorism.
According to public reports, Russia warned the FBI numerous times about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, one of two brothers accused in the bombing attack. He was killed in a firefight with police on Friday; his younger brother Dzhokhar, 19, remains hospitalized after he was captured.
“You've got to be ahead of this expansion of radical Islam and the cells that are developing not only within the Middle East but in Asia as well as in Europe and in the United States,” said Vallely. “That has been developed from the source of all of this, which is Tehran, Iran, supporting Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations.”
He noted that Glenn Beck revealed a third party involved in the Boston situation, a Saudi who was taken out of the country.
“So we have a continued cover-up of the facts and there are certain things that have to be kept confidential, of course, by the government, but certainly do not deceive the American people,” he said. “Tell them the truth when you can and when it’s viable to do it without exposing any major threats to the United States. And again, you’ve got to preempt this, you’ve got to be ahead of it, and the FBI did not preempt this adequately.”
Vallely also noted the Obama administration's decision to try Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a criminal rather than an enemy combatant is an example of a return to 1990s policies that treated terrorism as a simple legal matter.
“This goes directly to Attorney General [Eric] Holder, the Justice Department, the wraps that have been put on the senior-level bureaucrats within government,” said Vallely. “They can’t even say radical Islam anymore. So when you have that occurring, you have a planned agenda that this administration does not want to take on and reveal what is happening in this expansion of radical Islam.”
He said in hearings in Congress this week, lawmakers will take a look at the situation of enemy combatants.
“It’s not saying they can’t be tried in our courts, which seem to move faster than the military tribunals have moved, so it’ll continue to be an argument,” said Vallely. “[Nidal Malik] Hasan killed 13 at Fort Hood, and he's still not been sentenced. Our justice system is moving very, very slowly in regards to these Islamists.”
Vallely agrees with former Congressman Pete Hoekstra's claim that a foreign government was behind the Boston attacks, noting that Saudi Arabia continues using some of its financial resources to support the Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaida.
Vallely also agreed, in reference to a thwarted al-Qaida plan to attack Canadian railroads, that Iran continues to have links in North America.
“They’ve been supporting their major proxy, which is Hezbollah, to $300 million a year to take action against Israel and to form cells that have come in through Argentina and on up into our southern borders,” said Vallely. “It seems that our departments, our intelligence sources — the CIA, the National Security Council, the State Department — want to ignore these things and not be up front with the American people.”
Vallely said the United States should support the Iranian opposition. “There’s a way to bring down the mullahs and we don’t have to put troops on the ground to do it,” he said. “There’s a way to do this that we don’t have to put troops or bases in the Middle East to make things happen.”
Editor's Note: Iran Will Have Nuclear Weapon By 2014 — Watch Urgent Briefing Now!
However, he said, while the Obama administration says it is helping in countries like Syria, it is not.
Finally, Vallely said the ongoing investigation into the Benghazi attacks, which left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead, is giving Americans a false narrative about the incident.
“Even the whistleblowers we had testifying last week from the State Department and CIA, they know full well this administration is wrapped and wrapped by a big blanket of deception and lies,” said Vallely.