Vox: Donald Trump and ISIS are pushing the same weird conspiracy theory

[font size="4"]Donald Trump and ISIS are pushing the same weird conspiracy theory[/font]

Donald Trump, who’s never met a conspiracy theory he didn’t like, suggested in Wednesday night’s presidential debate that the US-backed Iraqi military offensive to take back the city of Mosul from ISIS, which officially launched on Monday, was strategically timed by President Barack Obama to help Hillary Clinton win the presidential election.

"The only reason they did it is because she's running for office of president and they want to look tough," Trump said. "They want to look good. He violated the red line in the sand, and he made so many mistakes. He made all mistakes. That's why we have the great migration, but she wanted to look good for the election."

ISIS apparently agrees with Trump — or at least agrees that this a useful conspiracy theory to promote. Charlie Winter, a senior researcher at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence reports that the groups claims in a new editorial in its weekly Arabic-language newspaper, Naba, that the Mosul operation was “prompted by ‘necessities of presidential election in US’ and ‘economic problems’ faced by [the governments in] Baghdad/Erbil [the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan].”

This assertion is absurd on its face: Baghdad, not Washington, makes the final decisions on when, and how, to launch major military operations inside their own country...