From the Cuba List, my comments follow:
Deranged Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Carl Levin (D-MI) have already jumped to support this. Rubio: “This is long overdue and the US must lead…and take the fight directly to Bashar al-Assad.” Levin: “In light of recent events in Iraq and Syria, this is appropriate spending,” Where does your Rep stand on this vote? Ask them! Obama seeks 500M dollars to train, equip Syrian rebels Agence France-Presse, June 27, 2014
WASHINGTON – The White House asked lawmakers Thursday for $500 million to train and equip vetted Syrian rebels, in what would be a significant escalation of US involvement in a conflict that has spilled into Iraq.
Following several signals in recent weeks by President Barack Obama’s administration — and months of pressure from lawmakers like Senator John McCain — the White House said it intends to “ramp up US support to the moderate Syrian opposition.”
The request is part of a $1.5 billion Regional Stabilization Initiative to bolster stability in Syrian neighbors Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, and to support communities hosting refugees.
The proposed funding would serve “vetted elements of the Syrian armed opposition to help defend the Syrian people, stabilize areas under opposition control, facilitate the provision of essential services, counter terrorist threats and promote conditions for a negotiated settlement,” the White House said in a statement.
The proposal was part of the $65.8 billion overseas contingency operations request to Congress for fiscal year 2015, which begins October 1.
…
While US officials normally publicly refuse to comment on details of training for opposition groups, Obama’s National Security Advisor Susan Rice acknowledged early this month that the Pentagon was providing “lethal and non-lethal support” to Syrian rebels.About $287 million in mainly non-lethal support has been cleared for the rebels since March 2011, and the CIA has participated in a secret military training program in neighboring Jordan for the moderate opposition.
The Syria initiative received tepid support from at least one Republican lawmaker, Senator Marco Rubio, who has been a fierce critic of what the Obama administration&# 39;s “rudderless foreign policy.”
“This is long overdue and the US must lead, with European and regional partners, in helping to develop a cadre of fighters who will alienate ISIL and Al-Nusra Islamic extremists, and take the fight directly to Bashar al-Assad,” Rubio said.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, a Democrat, said a similar funding request in the defense authorization bill received broad bipartisan support in his committee.
“In light of recent events in Iraq and Syria, this is appropriate spending,” Levin said
This shows the sheer insanity of US foreign policy. If something doesn’t work, double down on it!
Since ISIS rampaged through Northern Iraq in the past few weeks, there has been a lot of talk about exactly how this happened. The US has been accused of aiding and training ISIS. Actually, this is sort of a false accusation.
The truth is that the US probably did little in the way of training and aiding ISIS. However, US allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been shoveling money at them and Turkey has been giving them a home base inside Turkey. When ISIS attacked an Armenian town in northwest Turkey, Turkish artillery helped cover their assault on the town.
US and NATO advisors are present all over this part of Turkey where those shells come from, where ISIS is aided and trained and where their rearguard bases are. So while Washington is not directly aiding ISIS (except for a small group of them in Jordan) it is more correct to say that the US has been holding our nose and looking the other way while our allies have been aiding and training ISIS, Al-Nusra and the rest of the Islamists.
The US brainwash media Lie Machine is making it look like Obama is just now asking Congress to aid the Syrian rebels, whereas before we gave them nothing but nonlethal aid. It is indeed correct that officially the US has been giving the Syrian rebels nothing but nonlethal aid. However, all this time the CIA has been running a Black Budget campaign designed to arm and train the Syrian rebels. A lot of the training is taking place in Jordan.
It was often said that the CIA money was mostly going to the moderate Free Syrian Army rebels. This is probably true, but the FSA is now much diminished. 2/3 of the rebels are Islamists, and the FSA only makes up 1/3 of the armed opposition.
Many Left writers say that the FSA does not even exist anymore, but that does not seem to be the case. A lot of the arms given to the FSA somehow seem to have gotten into the hands of the Islamists, however. And the general mass aid flow to the Syrian rebels, either to the FSA or the Islamists, seems to have somehow in some way or other empowered the Islamists. So in some roundabout way all that aid pouring in to the Syrian rebels is in large part responsible for the growth of ISIS, Al-Nusra and the Islamic Front.
What is really happening here is Obama is taking the arming of the Syrian rebels out of the hands of the CIA and giving it to the State Department. It is going from an off-budget Black Budget secret CIA program to an official US government above board project.
But it won’t work any better this time than it did last time. Last time all it did was create and empower ISIS and the other radical Islamists, and this time it will do exactly the same thing.
So US foreign policy is truly insane.
- Syria: In effect, support ISIS and other Islamists to attack and destroy Syria and hopefully oust Assad. If Assad cannot be ousted, the destruction of Syria (an enemy state) will suffice.
- Iraq: Attack and destroy the very same ISIS and Islamists that are being created in Syria when they logically overrun much of Iraq.
- Support for ISIS in Syria will strengthen ISIS in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, where they will do nothing but cause problems for these countries.