{"id":14598,"date":"2012-12-06T14:28:52","date_gmt":"2012-12-06T21:28:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=14598"},"modified":"2012-12-06T14:28:52","modified_gmt":"2012-12-06T21:28:52","slug":"cia-directing-arms-shipments-to-syrias-rebels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=14598","title":{"rendered":"CIA directing arms shipments to Syria\u2019s \u201crebels\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

CIA directing arms shipments to Syria\u2019s \u201crebels\u201d <\/strong>
\nBy Bill Van Auken – 22 June, 2012 – Axis of Logic – WSWS<\/p>\n

CIA agents have been deployed to Turkey to organize the arming of the so-called rebels in Syria seeking the overthrow of the government of President Bashar al-Assad, the New York Times reported Thursday.<\/p>\n

The report, citing information provided by senior US officials as well as Arab intelligence officers, states that the CIA operatives are directing a massive smuggling operation through which \u201cautomatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons, are being funneled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries, including the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, and paid for by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.\u201d<\/p>\n

The day before the publication of the Times piece, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland reiterated the Obama administration\u2019s public line. \u201cWe have repeatedly said that we are not in the business of arming in Syria.\u201d She went on to describe Syria\u2019s ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar al-Jaafari as \u201cdeluded\u201d for charging that major foreign powers were backing \u201carmed terrorist groups\u201d in his country and trying to escalate Syria\u2019s crisis into an \u201cexplosion\u201d in order to bring about \u201cregime change.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Times article only confirms earlier press reports and provides further detail in exposing the same, barely covert, operation directed at fomenting and arming a sectarian civil war in Syria.<\/p>\n

Last month, the Washington Post reported that the so-called rebels had \u201cbegun receiving significantly more and better weapons in recent weeks, an effort paid for by Persian Gulf nations and coordinated in part by the United States.\u201d The Post, in its May 16 article, also stated that US operatives had \u201cexpanded contacts with opposition forces to provide the gulf nations with assessments of rebel credibility and command-and-control infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n

And last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that \u201cthe Central Intelligence Agency and State Department\u2014working with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and other allies\u2014are helping the opposition Free Syrian Army develop logistical routes for moving supplies into Syria and providing communications training.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result of this operation has been a sharp escalation in the armed violence in Syria, with a spike in the number of Syrian soldiers killed and wounded and a proliferation of terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n

The Obama administration\u2019s pretense that it is not arming the Syrian militias for the purpose of toppling the Assad government has been thoroughly exposed. Its claim is based on the fiction that Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, none of which would carry out such an operation without Washington\u2019s approval, are doing the arming, and the CIA agents are merely \u201cvetting\u201d the Syrian rebels to assure that weapons do not fall into the wrong hands.<\/p>\n

The Times report quotes one unnamed senior American official as claiming that the CIA is working on the Syrian-Turkish border \u201cto help keep weapons out of the hands of fighters allied with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.\u201d …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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CIA directing arms shipments to Syria\u2019s \u201crebels\u201d By Bill Van Auken – 22 June, 2012 – Axis of Logic – WSWS CIA agents have been deployed to Turkey to organize the arming of the so-called rebels in Syria seeking the overthrow of the government of President Bashar al-Assad, the New York Times reported Thursday. The 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":[3048],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14598"}],"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=14598"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14600,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14598\/revisions\/14600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}