{"id":10211,"date":"2012-05-29T06:52:46","date_gmt":"2012-05-29T13:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=10211"},"modified":"2012-05-29T06:52:46","modified_gmt":"2012-05-29T13:52:46","slug":"us-agitates-multi-front-proxy-war-against-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=10211","title":{"rendered":"US agitates multi-front proxy war against Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

US prepares multi-front proxy war against Syria<\/strong>
\nBy Chris Marsden – 25 May, 2012 – WSWS<\/p>\n

Since the Washington Post\u2019s May 16 report on an influx of arms to Syrian opposition forces, the Obama administration\u2019s plans for a proxy war against Syria have become clearer still.<\/p>\n

The Post wrote of \u201csignificantly more and better weapons\u201d reaching oppositionists, \u201cpaid for by Persian Gulf nations [Saudi Arabia and Qatar] and coordinated in part by the United States,\u201d based upon a perspective that \u201can expanding military confrontation is inevitable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saudi Arabia and Qatar were sending weapons with approval from Washington, which has \u201cexpanded contacts with opposition forces to provide the gulf nations with assessments of rebel credibility and command-and-control infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n

An additional source of weaponry is the Muslim Brotherhood, which has \u201cits own supply channel to the rebels, using resources from wealthy private individuals and money from Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, said Mulham al-Drobi, a member of the Brotherhood\u2019s executive committee.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Post concluded by noting, \u201cThe Pentagon has prepared options for Syria extending all the way to air assaults to destroy the nation\u2019s air defenses.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Daily Telegraph of May 22, Michael Weiss, Communications Director of the Henry Jackson Society, writes that \u201cRebel sources in Hatay told me last night that not only is Turkey supplying light arms to select battalion commanders, it is also training Syrians in Istanbul.\u201d<\/p>\n

He continues, \u201cMen from the unit I was embedded with were vetted and called up by Turkish intelligence in the last few days and large consignments of AK-47s are being delivered by the Turkish military to the Syrian-Turkish border\u2026 Material is being stockpiled in Damascus, in Idlib near the Turkish border and in Zabadani on the Lebanese border.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weiss notes the response to the Washington Post\u2019s article by White House spokesman Jay Carney, which hardly amounted to a denial. \u201cWe continue to provide non-lethal support to the opposition,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd while I can only speak for the United States, we know that others are pursuing different types of support, and I\u2019d refer you to them to characterise the nature of their actions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weiss concludes, \u201cTurkey wouldn\u2019t take such a course of action without express American consent or encouragement. Nor do I think that US Senator Joseph Lieberman, who has called for surgical airstrikes and the creation of buffer zones in Syria, would indicate that the administration was inching toward a military response to the humanitarian crisis that Kofi Annan\u2019s farcical \u2018cease-fire\u2019 has done nothing to quell unless he was fairly sure it was indeed doing so.\u201d<\/p>\n

A May 22 DEBKAfile exclusive report states, \u201cThe Syrian rebels have received their first \u2018third generation\u2019 anti-tank weapons, 9K115-2 Metis-M and Kornet E. They are supplied by Saudi and Qatari intelligence agencies following a secret message from President Barack Obama advising them to up the military stake in the effort to oust Assad.\u201d<\/p>\n

DEBKAfile, which is close to US neo-conservative sources, describes these shipments as \u201conly one facet of the unfolding US plan for the Syrian crisis\u2026 Turkish intelligence has been given the green light to arm Syria rebels with IED roadside bombs tailored for the Syrian theater and intensively train the dissidents in their use at Turkish military facilities.\u201d This is tantamount to Ankara\u2019s first direct military intervention in Syria.<\/p>\n

Turkey has for some time acted as an organising front for imperialist intervention into Syria, aimed at deposing the pro-Iranian regime of Bashar al-Assad. It is host to the SNC and its military arm, the Free Syrian Army\u2014which mounts its offensives by passing through Turkey\u2019s 910 kilometre border with Syria. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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US prepares multi-front proxy war against Syria By Chris Marsden – 25 May, 2012 – WSWS Since the Washington Post\u2019s May 16 report on an influx of arms to Syrian opposition forces, the Obama administration\u2019s plans for a proxy war against Syria have become clearer still. The Post wrote of \u201csignificantly more and better weapons\u201d more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[2000],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10211"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10212,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10211\/revisions\/10212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}