Posted on 12/04/2016 12:30:35 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Congress authorizes Trump to arm Syrian rebels with anti-aircraft missiles
The House voted for the first time today to explicitly authorize the incoming Donald Trump administration to arm vetted Syrian rebels with anti-aircraft missiles.
Summary Today, the House passed a defense bill that conditionally allows the provision of MANPADs to anti-Syrian regime forces.
Author Julian Pecquet Posted December 2, 2016
While the language in the annual defense bill also creates restrictions on the provision of the controversial weapons, it represents a win for Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., a fervent advocate of helping the rebels resist President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies. The Senate is expected to pass the bill next week.
Until now, the transfer of man-portable air-defense systems, or MANPADs, had been implicitly authorized in the absence of an outright ban. Critics, however, view the new provision as tantamount to a policy recommendation for the president-elect.
"I'm more afraid of Congress on this issue than I am of Trump,” said Robert Naiman, the policy director at Just Foreign Policy, a liberal advocacy group that lobbied for a ban. “I think Congress is trying to tie Trump's hands against making a realistic deal with Russia to end the Syrian civil war. And they are trying to pressure him in the direction of not doing that," he told Al-Monitor.
/snip
Mattis is well known in military and foreign policy circles for his aggressive determination to take on America’s foes, notably Iran, including in Syria and Iraq. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee as far back as January 2015, however, he opined that the time for supporting moderate rebel fighters against Assad's forces had "passed."
(Excerpt) Read more at al-monitor.com ...
No, I did not tell you to masturbate, I equated your attitude and way of thinking through the challenges that face our country to being about as effective as masturbating. What you do on your own time is your business.
I will admit that I posted exactly what I’m thinking about you at this moment then you would be justified in hitting the report abuse tag.
Friggin’ snowflake.
Snowflake: An overly sensitive person, incapable of dealing with any opinions that differ from their own.
These people can often be seen congregating in “safe zones” on college campuses.
Those social justice warriors are just a bunch of snowflakes
While I sincerely appreciate your family’s sacrifices and wish your son-in-law the best, I still have to say you would be better off if you had a thicker skin and didn’t play the tattletale like a little kid.
I wish McCain the best when he is retired in a home of ignorant old fools who think Muslim terrorists are the good guys (Syrian Rebels = Muslim terrorists like Libyan Rebels = Muslim terrorists). Until McCain and idiots like him are gone, they are supporting the enemy just like Hussein has.
McCain: HINT: The guy backing the terrorists is named Hussein, he was raised as a Muslim. Duhhhh.
So, mccain wants the rebels to shoot down russian warcraft with U.S. rockets in order to start WWIII? Great plan, John.
In point of fact, President Trump and President Putin need to join forces and wipe ALL rebels in Syria off the face of the planet and then let Assad run his country.
These people are f’in retarded!
Holy crap, they won’t even give Israel the munitions for the F35!
What’s wrong with them? Are they afraid Israel might actually take out an Iranian nuke facility?
ARM ISRAEL
Man, you come up with brilliance beyond compare.
Do you have the bill that shows this.
I read the bill that shows that manpads were not authorized, so where is this authorization stated?. This is bs
Please find the bill because I’ve been looking and can’t find it.
I agree; this has potential dire circumstances. On more than one front....
***But he’s a Vet and former POW so I wish him the best.***
And? Does that give him the right to get countless Americans killed because he’s a war-mongering SOB? Does that make it ok to commit treason by giving aide and comfort to the most evil people on earth, people who decapitate little children in front of their parents?
In the most Christian way I can muster f him. I pray he seeks forgiveness for the horror he has helped cause before it’s too late.
The new provision was added in while the House and Senate worked out differences between the bills they passed earlier this year. The original House bill expressly prohibited the transfer of MANPADs to “any entity” in Syria, while the Senate version made no mention of them.
“The point of the conference committee is to resolve disagreements between the chambers," a House aide told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. "In this case, the conference committee’s resolution between an outright ban on sending them to Syria and the Senate’s lack of any comment whatsoever was somehow to explicitly authorize the transfer of MANPADs without any of the safety precautions that were widely deemed to be a minimum requirement for doing so.”
The “safety precautions” mentioned by the aide refer to potential technological controls that the United States has been trying to design, without much success, in case such weapons were to fall into the wrong hands. The compromise defense bill however does require the executive branch to notify Congress if it decides to provide MANPADs to the Syrian rebels, provide a detailed intelligence assessment of who would get them and then wait 30 days for any congressional reaction.
The new provision “would require the secretary of defense and secretary of state to notify the congressional defense committees, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee should a determination be made to provide MANPADs to elements of the appropriately vetted Syrian opposition,” according to the explanatory statement accompanying the compromise bill. “The conferees expect that should such a determination be made, the requirement for the provision of such a capability and the decision to provide it would be thoroughly vetted by and receive broad support from the interagency.”
Still, the compromise has outraged House lawmakers who want to keep MANPADs out of Syria. These members have long sought to explicitly ban their transfer, notably in a restriction to the Syria Train-and-Equip program in last year’s defense spending bill that was stripped out during negotiations with the Senate.
Since you have the text of legislation, you can compare this with your understanding of legislation.
Thank you! I truly appreciate your references. I’ll go find the section I read earlier and ping you.
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