You can't make this up: just a couple weeks after the nation remembered the 24th anniversary of 9/11 attacks, Al Qaeda is back in New York, but this time its Syrian founder is getting the red carpet treatment.
Self-appointed Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, whose al-Qaeda and ISIS name is Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, will attend the meeting on the UN General Assembly (UNGA), the first Syrian president to do so since 1967.
"The visit marks a major diplomatic moment for Damascus as it returns to the UN stage at the head-of-state level for the first time after nearly six decades," Syria's state-run SANA stated.
Only a short time ago, Jolani had a $10 million bounty on his head for being founder of the Nusra Front, recognized a terrorist organization.
But soon after his rebranded AQ-affiliate group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), took Damascus and toppled Assad last December, that bounty was dropped by the US and President Trump later vowed to drop sanctions on Syria.
Jolani had fought American troops in Iraq, and dispatched suicide bombers, and later crossed over into Syria as the personal envoy of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Now he's being hosted on a stage in New York by former CIA Director David Petraeus...
At one point in the conversation, there was this exchange:
Petraeus: We were on different sides when I was commanding the surge in Iraq... Please help us understand how you got from al Qaeda in Iraq 20 years ago to where you are today?
Sharaa: At a time, we were in combat and then we now move to the discourse... We cannot judge the past based on the rules of today, and cannot judge today based on the rules of the past
Ultimately, the jihadist groups which had long been backed by the Gulf-funded D.C. think tanks won the war, and tragically amid all the conversations with Sharaa in New York this week, not a peep will be uttered on the ongoing massacres of Alawites, Druze, and Christians.
When the history books are written about Ben Laden and his fanatical terrorist followers (like Al-Sharaa below), it should be acknowledged that Charles Lister among DC think tankers and Ben Rhodes in the Obama administration were the biggest champions of Ben Laden in Syria. https://t.co/eZi4b4AzPT
— asad abukhalil أسعد أبو خليل (@asadabukhalil) September 21, 2025
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani is also in the US traveling with his boss Sharaa/Jolani. He was also a high-ranking member of Al-Qaeda in Syria.
Later in the day Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio also posed on stage with Sharaa...
Al-Qaeda, the CIA, and the US Secretary of State in New York to hail the spread of "democracy" in the Middle East after toppling another secular government in the Middle East... more signs of the rapidly moving decline of American Empire.