Posted on 06/27/2016 12:33:15 AM PDT by Mount Athos
Weapons shipped into Jordan by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi Arabia intended for Syrian rebels have been systematically stolen by Jordanian intelligence operatives and sold to arms merchants on the black market, according to American and Jordanian officials.
Some of the stolen weapons were used in a shooting in November that killed two Americans and three others at a police training facility in Amman, F.B.I. officials believe after months of investigating the attack.
The Jordanian officers who were part of the scheme reaped a windfall from the weapons sales.
The training program, which in 2013 began directly arming the rebels under the code name Timber Sycamore, is run by the C.I.A. and several Arab intelligence services and aimed at building up forces opposing President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The United States and Saudi Arabia are the biggest contributors, with the Saudis contributing both weapons and large sums of money, and with C.I.A. paramilitary operatives taking the lead in training the rebels to use Kalashnikovs, mortars, antitank guided missiles and other weapons.
American officials say that the C.I.A. has trained thousands of rebels in the past three years.
The program is separate from one that the Pentagon set up to train rebels to combat Islamic State fighters, rather than the Syrian military. That program was shut down after it managed to train only a handful of Syrian rebels.
President Obama authorized the covert arming program in April 2013, after more than a year of debate inside the administration about the wisdom of using the C.I.A. to train rebels trying to oust Mr. Assad.
By late 2013, the C.I.A. was working directly with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other nations to arm and train small groups of rebels and send them across the border into Syria.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
In the 1980's the CIA armed the Islamic mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets.
That action tturned out to be the catalyst of a disasterous 25 years for the USA, the mid-East and Europe.
Osama bin Laden, a wealthy Saudi, was a prominent organizer and financier of foreign volunteers for the mujaheddin in Afghanistan.
When the Soviets withdrew, some of the mujahideen morphed into the Taliban and embarked on a reign of militant Islamic jihadi terror.
Osama bin Laden went on to found Al-Qaeda.
In 2001 Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda carried out the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
And here we are after 15 years of fighting in Afghanistan:
Obama is arming al-Qaeda in Syria in hopes of taking Assad down and installing a hard line Islamic regime.
But guns are too dangerous for Americans to have....
Weapons shipped into Jordan by the Central Intelligence Agency Bush Administration and Saudi Arabia intended for Syrian rebels have been systematically stolen...
We need to stop arming anyone in the middle east. All we are doing is arming people who will
a. kill everyone in sight including civilians
b. kill us if/whe we stupidly decide to get involved boots on the ground again.
We also need to stay home. We don’t have a ‘side’ among the various Muslim factions.
And this is precisely what Trump wants to do.
I hope so. I’m not convinced of it however.
He’s been pretty emphatic about it. Have you read his position papers? or hear his foreign policy speech some weeks ago in IIRC DC?
Yeah we know. It was intentional. We know that, too.
When are people going to be prosecuted?
I’ve heard him say he’s gong to bomb the hell out of ISIS.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
