Al Qaida-linked group Syria rebels once denied now key to anti-Assad victories … When the group Jabhat al Nusra first claimed responsibility for car and suicide bombings in Damascus that killed dozens last January, many of Syria's revolutionaries claimed that the organization was a creation of the Syrian government, designed to discredit those who opposed the regime of President Bashar Assad and to hide the regime's own brutal tactics. Nearly a year later, however, Jabhat al Nusra, which U.S. officials believe has links to al Qaida, has become essential to the frontline operations of the rebels fighting to topple Assad. Not only does the group still conduct suicide bombings that have killed hundreds, but they've proved to be critical to the rebels' military advance. In battle after battle across the country, Nusra and similar groups do the heaviest frontline fighting. Groups who call themselves the Free Syrian Army and report to military councils led by defected Syrian army officers move into the captured territory afterward. – McClatchy

Dominant Social Theme: Al Qaeda is a dangerous terrorist organization that must be exterminated.

Free-Market Analysis: We reported just yesterday on Anonymous's attack on Syria's Internet facilities. Soon we expect Julian Assange to organize a wider data dump of Syrian secret memos.

Just kidding … not. Actually it's already been done. Look at this, from WikiLeaks.org:

Today, Thursday 5 July 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing the Syria Files – more than two million emails from Syrian political figures, ministries and associated companies, dating from August 2006 to March 2012.

This extraordinary data set derives from 680 Syria-related entities or domain names, including those of the Ministries of Presidential Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Finance, Information, Transport and Culture.

Over the next two months, ground-breaking stories derived from the files will appear in WikiLeaks (global), Al Akhbar (Lebanon), Al Masry Al Youm (Egypt), ARD (Germany), Associated Press (US), L'Espresso (Italy), Owni (France) and Publico.es (Spain). Other publications will announce themselves closer to their publishing date.

Do you sense a pattern here, dear reader? Still believe Assange is an independent blogger and hacker untouched by Western Intel?

No. The team is out in full force. Anonymous, WikiLeaks and, believe it or not, Al Qaeda.

Directed history, folks. Aimed at Syria these days.

We've always believed Al Qaeda to be a US Intel invention. The CIA denies it, of course. But Al Qaeda was reportedly active in Libya, supporting the "rebels" against Muammar Gaddafi. And now Al Qaeda fighters are showing up in Syria.

When is your enemy your friend? When they regularly fight on your side.

Here's some more from the McClatchy article:

The prominence of Nusra in the rebel cause worries U.S. and other Western officials, who say its operations rely on the same people and tactics that fueled al Qaida in Iraq – an assertion that is borne out by interviews with Nusra members in Syria.

Among Nusra fighters are many Syrians who say they fought with al Qaida in Iraq, which waged a bloody and violent campaign against the U.S. presence in that country and is still blamed for suicide and car bombings that have killed hundreds of Iraqis since the U.S. troops left a year ago.

According to Nusra members, some of the group's leaders, including the emir, or top ruler, in Syria's Deir al Zour province, are Iraqis.

The group's prominence makes clear the dilemma of Syria's revolutionaries, as well as those who might provide support to them. Though members of Nusra operate independently of the other rebel groups that have taken up arms _ and particularly those that are calling for elections if Assad is deposed _ it is increasingly clear that their operations are closely coordinated with more secular rebels.

Some Syrians say that Nusra's importance is a result of the West's failure to support those secular rebels. But the closeness of the coordination between Nusra and other rebels makes it difficult to support one without empowering the other.

Okay, let's unpack this a bit. The US State Department and NATO formed AYM, a youth movement responsible for helping to destabilize Tunisia and Egypt. Libya's destabilization was promoted along the same lines, and Syria as well.

The power elite that stands behind these operations is evidently and obviously creating an Islamic crescent arc in the Middle East. The idea, from what we can tell, is to create a battle between East and West, between Islam and Christianity.

This sort of tension provides the elite with opportunities to further impose authoritarianism on the West as they go about building what seems to be world government.

The elites use war, religion and terrorism memes. The terrorism theme and subtheme is quite useful. The word terrorist can be applied at will to anyone the authorities deem is standing in their way. In the US, the word terrorist is now being applied to people who believe in the US Constitution and speak out on its behalf.

So we are not surprised that Al Qaeda is showing up in Syria any more than we are surprised about WikiLeaks or Anonymous. Al Qaeda is evidently a kind of false flag.

The McClatchy article presents US officials as "worried" about the presence of Al Qaeda in Syria. No doubt they were "worried" about Al Qaeda in Libya, too.

Al Qaeda is just a name, apparently, for battle-hardened Islamic mercenaries that will fight where they are paid to fight.

And if one way or another NATO and the US want their presences on Middle Eastern battlefields, money will exchange hands, arrangements will be made and the young men will travel to where they are needed.