Posted on 02/08/2013 3:37:56 AM PST by Sub-Driver
Obama Blocked Rebel Arms
White House Opposed Pentagon, CIA, State Plan to Ship Weapons to Syrian Resistance By ADAM ENTOUS
WASHINGTON—A proposal to arm Syrian rebels was backed by the Pentagon, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency, but the White House decided not to act on the plan.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, revealed publicly for the first time at a Senate hearing on Thursday that they supported the proposal last year by senior officials including then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-CIA director David Petraeus.
The officials came to favor the plan last year with the meltdown of an international diplomatic initiative to end the Syrian civil war, according to current and former officials involved in the deliberations.
The White House stalled the proposal because of lingering questions about which rebels could be trusted with the arms, whether the transfers would make a difference in the campaign to remove Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and whether the weapons would add to the suffering, the U.S. officials said. A U.S. official cited the findings of a CIA team of analysts, which cast doubt on the impact of arming the rebels on the conflict.
The disclosures thrust a spotlight on the extent to which President Barack Obama charts his own course in the face of calls to action by members of his own team, and on the extent of his caution about entering a new conflict. The White House declined to comment on internal administration deliberations.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Yup. The peacenick twixt all them warmongers.
Anybody buying this?
Didn’t think so.
Oh really? Then what was going on in Benghazi?
They are simply setting up the blame game and make it all the fault of the dead guy.
BS
When I clicked on this Post I got a terrible whiff of an odor of mendacity.
It was not at all pleasant to the nostrils.
What’s that smell in this room? Didn’t you notice it? Didn’t you notice a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room?... There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odor of mendacity... You can smell it. It smells like death.
Cover story.
we are still waiting to hear testimony of the 30 or more US employees who were there at the time. Where are they? Why are they not being called upon to testify?
I think what obozo probably said was, “I don’t want to know nothin’ about this splendid plan.”
Obama didn't know nothing, no how. Evah.
Since Satan is the father of lies, then I guess Obama is Satan’s Trayvon.
I’m glad it’s coming out this way. When the eventual testimony starts to leak, it will be clear he’s been caught lying (again), and it will blow up in his face, big time. Of course at the top level, they’re ALL a pack of liars. So lacking a voice of credibility (or three) from inside the CIA operation, it will be hard to make anything stick. If we do get that testimony, it will be very damaging to Zero, long term.
Yes, where are those that were on the ground? A senator (forget which one) noted this fact in yesterday’s hearings with Panetta/Dempsey....noted how unusual it was to NOT hear from them after all this time.
So, if arms WERE actually being funnelled through Libya, wonder who will take the fall? Petraeus? He’s gone now.
I think you’ve got it!
Besides, maybe the people he really wanted to arm were even more extreme than even our Muslim-loving State and Defense Departments could tolerate, and he needed to use the back-channel of Benghazi. That way he could maintain deniability when the “rebels” turned out to be Al Qaeda, bringing another day of the glorious Arab Spring to the Middle East.
The anti radical Islam bias can go overboard.
It seems that while someone here, State Department, CIA, DOD...... was involved in moving surplus arms to Syria, the other end of the pipeline was Turkey.
That is, the Turkey/GCC coalition would disperse the arms to those units deemed most desirable and not the radical yahoos founded for the specific purpose of bringing them down. It is also worthwhile to note that those units include Special Forces advisors provided by the coalition
I think what you have suggested was probably the aim of the overt US attempt to provide arms, but I think that Obama probably didn’t want the arms going to those people (who may actually have been some “rebels” who simply didn’t like Bashir but weren’t AQ).
Obama always seems to want to go against professional advice and do his own loopy thing, and I think he believes that, deep down inside, AQ are really the good guys. They’re just misunderstood...
What is really interesting is that the Obama Regime had to put out this BS story in the first place. It shows that this CIA/Al Qaeda gun running story is gaining traction with the public. The is exactly the same reason they had to put out that picture of Barry shooting a shotgun.
Don't look for the GOP to go after Obama on this issue. Barry is just continuing a policy that began under the Bush Regime in 2007.
WSJ: To Check Syria, U.S. Explores Bond With Muslim Brothers
Never forget that Al Qaeda was created by the US government and used to go after the Russians in the 80's, the Serbians in 90's, and Libya in 2011. Yet we Americans have had our 4th Amendment rights eviscerated, our Grandmothers groped at the airports, and the local police militarized and federalized because the Al Qaeda boogieman might get us. See how that works.
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