Tag Archives: Syrian rebels

Dec 12 2012

U.S. designates Syria rebel group a terrorist organization

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A Syrian rebel prepares to advance against government troops in Azaz.Manu Brabo / AP

By Paul RICHTER, LA Times

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has formally designated a rebel group fighting in Syria as a terrorist organization in an effort to marginalize the Al Qaeda affiliate and reduce its chances of gaining power should the Syrian government fall.

Blacklisting Al Nusra Front is one of several diplomatic moves planned by the administration to try to maneuver moderate opposition groups into position to shape a pro-Western government if President Bashar Assad is ousted.

U.S diplomats are to take another step toward that end Wednesday at a meeting in Morocco, where the U.S. is expected to formally recognize a recently formed coalition of rebel groups — the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces — as Syria’s legitimate government-in-waiting.

“We’ve made a decision that the Syrian opposition coalition is now inclusive enough, is reflective and representative enough of the Syrian population that we consider them the legitimate representative of the Syrian people in opposition to the Assad regime,” President Obama told ABC News on Tuesday in advance of the Morocco meeting.

U.S. officials acknowledge, however, that the umbrella group has limited influence with the dozens of insurgent groups that have emerged in Syria’s nearly 21-month-old civil war.

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Dec 11 2012

The US Is Openly Sending Heavy Weapons From Libya To Syrian Rebels

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By Geoffrey Ingersoll and Michael Kelley, Business insider

The Obama administration has decided to launch a covert operation to send heavy weapons to Syrian rebels, Christina Lamb of The Sunday Times of London reports.

Diplomatic sources told the Sunday Times that the U.S. “bought weapons from the stockpiles of Libya’s former dictator Muammar Gaddafi.”

The heavy arms include mortars, rocket propelled grenades, anti-tank missiles and the controversial anti-aircraft heat-seeking SA-7 missiles, which are integral to countering Bashar Al-Assad’s bombing campaign.

Many have suspected that the US was already involved in sending heavy arms.

The administration has said that the previously hidden CIA operation in Benghazi involved finding, repurchasing and destroying heavy weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, but in October we reported evidence indicating that U.S. agents — particularly murdered ambassador Chris Stevens — were at least aware of heavy weapons moving from Libya to jihadist Syrian rebels.

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Nov 29 2012

Syria ‘names 142 foreign jihadists who fought with rebels’

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Syrian rebels celebrating the takeover of Mayadeen military base near Deir el-Zour (AP)

By Ruth Sherlock, The Telegraph

The Syrian government has named 142 foreign jihadists that it reportedly says were killed fighting alongside rebels in the country’s civil war.

Damascus-based newspaper Al-Watan on Tuesday published a list that it said the Syrian government had sent to the United Nations Security Council last month giving the names and the dates and locations where the “terrorists” were killed.

“Most are jihadists (radical Islamists) who belong to al-Qaeda’s network, or who joined it after arriving in Syria,” the paper said, adding that they entered Syria via Turkey and Lebanon.

Among the 142 it named 47 Saudis, 24 Libyans, 11 Afghans, 10 Tunisians, nine Egyptians, six Qataris and five Lebanese.

The government is thought to have asked for the list be registered as an official document on the UN’s agenda of “measures to combat international terrorism”.

Sources at the Syrian Mission to the United Nation said they could not immediately confirm that they knew of the letter.

When anti-government protests began in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad blamed the unrest on an invasion “foreign terrorists”.

Over the past 20 months, as demonstrations turned into war, an influx of foreign jihadists, many equipped with fighting skills learned in previous, has contributed to the strength of rebels fighting against the regime.

Videos released by the hardline Jabat al-Nusra, a jihadist group known to have attracted many foreign fighters, show rebels driving government tanks and celebrating around a freshly captured military base.

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Aug 7 2012

CFR Strategist Praises Al-Qaeda Bombings In Syria

Winston, we were never at war with Eurasia!

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Senior Council on Foreign Relations fellow Ed Husain has hailed the presence of Al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria, praising their fighting prowess in aid of FSA rebels while also lauding the increasing number of successful bombings carried out by Al-Qaeda fighters.

In case you didn’t get the memo – Al-Qaeda – the same group the United States accuses of carrying out the most devastating terrorist attack on U.S. soil in history, is now our ally in Syria.

Terrorist attacks carried out by Al-Qaeda in Syria are inherently moral and good. Down is the new up.

Winston, we were never at war with Eurasia! Continue reading →

Jun 16 2012

Syrian Rebels Coordinate “Libya Lite” with Obama’s NSC

By Kurt Nimmo, Infowars.com

Emissaries from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) have held meetings with high level U.S. government officials in Washington, the Daily Telegraph reported on Saturday. The CIA, MI6 and Mossad supported rebels consulted with Obama’s National Security Council and presented a shopping list of heavy weapons, including surface-to-air missiles.

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Members of the Free Syrian Army

On Thursday, we reported that the Pentagon had finalized plans to attack Syria. “The U.S. military has completed its own planning for how American troops would conduct a variety of operations against Syria, or to assist neighboring countries in the event action was ordered, officials tell CNN.”

Syrian ambassador Robert Ford and Frederick Hoff, special coordinator for the Middle East, also met with FSA representatives in the last week at the State Department.

The high level talks preface a meeting of the G20 next week in Los Cabos, Mexico, where U.S. and British officials will try to convince Russia’s Vladimir Putin to join the effort to militarily overthrow the al-Assad regime. Russia and China have blocked efforts by the United Nations Security Council to intervene in Syria.

According to the Daily Telegraph, western officials have privately admitted they do not expect Russia to change its position.

Funds from the oil-rich sheikdoms of Saudi Arabia and Qatar and weapons imported from Libya, including anti-tank weapons, are expected to be used for the “inevitable” intervention. Officials describe the planned military intervention as “Libya Lite,” according to the newspaper.

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May 7 2012

Another Watergate unfolding: The Lutfallah II Arms-Smuggling to Syria Scandal

By Franklin LAMB

Tripoli, Lebanon

It would be an incautious stretch to suggest any sort of parity between Watergate and the unfolding Lutfallah II arms shipment-to-Syria drama, that each day brings more revelations. But some of what we are daily learning about the who, what and why of Lutfallah II reminds some of us of a Watergate, type atmosphere including  “bit by bit, drip by drip” revelations,  denials, setting up fall guys and remarkable examples of incompetence.

The still unfolding Lutfallah II weapons running misadventure, in which a claimed Syrian-owned vessel registered in Sierra Leone but apparently flying the Egyptian flag, was detained off the Lebanese port of Batoun, by the Lebanese Army Marines because it was sailing too high in the water, and appeared “suspicious,” and was then found to contain 300,000 pounds of weapons may erupt unpredictably with serious political consequences for the region.

“Deepthroat”, the FBI mole who met secretly with Woodward & Bernstein and leaked confidential US government information to the duo, as revenge against President Nixon for rejecting him as successor to the deceased FBI Director, J.Edgar Hoover, outed himself in 2005.  “Deepthroat”, after a quarter century of hundreds of sleuths trying to divine, if he/she even existed, turned out to be none other than Deputy Director of the FBI, William Mark Felt, Sr. “Deepthroat” repeated advice to the Washington Post reporters was to “Follow the Money!”

They did. The rest is history.

If a ‘deep throat’ appears in Libya, Qatar of elsewhere, and offering advice to reporters who appear in Benghazi and Misrata in order to dig into what really happened, it might be that he will counsel:  “Follow the weapons”.

Eyewitness Hassan Diab is a Libyan researcher who has been working with a group of American and International lawyers preparing a case against NATO to be filed with the International Criminal Court. Hassan and three of his friends actually saw the ship Lutfallah II being loaded in Benghazi, Libya. Hassan claims that it is well known at the docks that Qatar and Saudi Arabia control a total of five warehouses in the area of Benghazi & Misrata and supplied the weapons and money to hire the  Lutfallah II container vessel.

Libyans in the area are reporting that the intercepted arms are from both Gadaffi stockpiles left over from NATO’s Libya campaign and some from the Qatar-Saudi six month weapons pipelines into Libya. When NATO declared a cessation of its bombing on Halloween night, October 31, 2011 the scramble for weapons began and Qatar stored and purchased whatever weapons came to its notice and from various militias who were willing to do business.

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Mar 30 2012

McCain, Lieberman and Graham: The Senate’s three war-crazed amigos

John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman (Credit: AP)

By Alex Pareene for Salon.com

When John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman join forces, you can be sure of one thing: It will involve state-sponsored violence. Today, they want us to arm Syrian rebels. Though, you know, what they reallywanted to call for was actually bombing the hell out of Syria, until there is freedom. They’re just taking it slow.

The Senate’s three most predictable and least credible warmongering “moderates” frequently join forces to publish joint Op-Eds or hold press conferences and the one thing they always, invariably want is for the United States to have just a little bit more war than it currently has, somewhere far away. Sure, we could draw down in Iraq … or we could listen to McCain, Lieberman and Graham and draw back up. We coulddraw down in Afghanistan … or we could stay the course and keep sending troops there until we win! Americans may be tired of endless war with no coherent goal, but on the other hand, “only decisive force can prevail in [whatever country John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman are talking about now].”

As the Hill recently explained in a story on how John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman were pushing for a resolution basically promising to make war with Iran, “Graham, Lieberman and McCain are considered some of the top foreign policy experts in the upper chamber,” because they always, invariably support military intervention everywhere for any reason, and that is invariably considered a sign of “seriousness” in Washington. If you don’t like waging wars everywhere, forever, you are a weird kooky hippie, and everyone laughs at you. If you believe that bombs and troops have the power to magically solve all problems, you are invited on all the Sunday shows every week to offer your sober analysis of the foreign situation. Continue reading →