In June 2011, the George Soros-funded progressive stalwarts at Media Matters published an article entitled “Glenn Beck’s Top 5 Conspiracy Theories.” Number one on that list? Glenn’s assertion that the declaration of a caliphate was no longer a matter of if but when. Media Matters derided Glenn for saying the caliphate would begin coming to fruition in February 2011.

While Glenn has openly admitted his timeframes are often off, we now see those who scoffed at even the mention of the word ‘caliphate’ are being forced to backtrack. On radio this morning, Glenn took a deeper look at the situation in Iraq and Syria as ISIS attempts to seize more and more control.

“To put this fully in perspective, three year ago, Media Matters did a list of Glenn Beck's top five conspiracies,” Stu said. “Today, President Barack Obama is bombing Iraq to stop number one on that list: The caliphate… We're currently at war over it.”

In order to add some context to the current situation in the Middle East that has seen President Obama authorize airstrikes and humanitarian aide in Iraq, Glenn focused on the difference between the national values of the United States compared to the national interests of the country:

"Why are we in Iraq in the first place? Why were we there? Well, some would tell you it was for oil. It may have been. Some will tell you that it was political. May have been. May have been for vengeance. We were angry… and we wanted to change the Middle East. Not only did we want to get the bad guys, but we also wanted to change the Middle East. That’s the only one that served our values, I believe… But we botched it so badly.

I was for, if you remember, at the time, the stopping of the Islamic State of Iran because I believe that Iran was the poison in that area. We haven't been given all the information on Saudi Arabia, but Saudi Arabia is the other source of poison in that area. That's why they are holding back that 9/11 report that has the 28 redacted pages, because it's all about – this is my point of view – Saudi Arabia and how they were involved and who in our own government turned a blind eye. I don't believe anybody in our government knew about 9/11. But, in retrospect, it wouldn't be hard to put it all together. Hindsight is 20/20.

So the two sources of poison in the Middle East have been the state of Saudi Arabia and the state of Iran. The reason why I'm saying them as ‘states’ – I am saying them with small ‘S's’ – because the real goal is to have a caliphate again. That's something that was deemed ‘crazy’ a few years ago, when I was talking about it. It is not so crazy now, is it? In fact, all the things that I said would come with the caliphate, as you now have pictures of a 7-year-old boy holding up the head of somebody they disagreed with, you are starting to see how evil this really is."

The interests versus values comparison comes into play when you consider the actions of the Obama Administration over the last five and a half years. Glenn played a clip from Obama’s press conference over the weekend in which he made the point abundantly clear.

REPORTER: Mr. President, do you have any second thoughts about pulling all ground troops out of Iraq? And does it give you pause as the U.S. -- is it doing the same thing in Afghanistan?

OBAMA: What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision. Under the previous administration, we had turned over the country to a sovereign, democratically elected Iraqi government. In order for us to maintain troops in Iraq, we needed the invitation of the Iraqi government and we needed assurances that our personnel would be immune from prosecution if, for example, they were protecting themselves and ended up getting in a firefight with Iraqis, that they wouldn’t be hauled before an Iraqi judicial system.

“It is important to understand the difference between national values and political interests. When your political interests serve you to say, ‘It wasn't my decision now,’ you say that,” Glenn said. “But if your political interests tell you, yes, it is your decision, because it will work towards your political interests, then say that. That's a problem. There's no value system there because your political interests will tell you to say what he said this weekend.”

Meanwhile, just a couple of years ago, it was this President and his wife who were out on the campaign trail touting the fact that the war in Iraq ended during his administration:

“I am not going this to condemn the President,” Glenn said. “I am saying to you: You must be careful of what you are listening to because… they are all talking about their interests… But if we make moves based on our economic, political, or any other kind of interest, we will most likely be wrong because those things change day by day.”

Front page image courtesy of the AP