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Reports surface today that President Trump has cancelled the 2012/2013 covert CIA program giving weapons to ISIS and al-Qaeda in Syria.  [Washington Post Link] Various news organizations frame the issue as cancelling the program to “arm the moderate opposition to Bashir Assad”.  However, those news reports are entirely false. We know the Obama administration was arming ISIS as part of the larger Syria strategy because Secretary of State John Kerry went on record admitting the Obama Syrian strategy was actually to arm ISIS and extremist Islamic groups (al-Nusra) against Assad. We also know Secretary Kerry was being truthful in that media-hidden, albeit recorded, admission because CTH specifically...

Sean Keeley of The American Interest noticed a curious statement from National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster when he briefed reporters on the Syrian strike. And the one thing that I will tell you though, there was an effort to minimize – to minimize risk to third-country nationals at that airport – I think you read Russians from that – but that – and we took great pains to try to avoid that. […] And then there were also measures put in place to avoid hitting what we believe is a storage of sarin gas, so that that would not be ignited...

WASHINGTON, DC — Hillary Clinton received a classified intelligence report stating that the Obama administration was actively supporting Al Qaeda in Iraq, the terrorist group that became the Islamic State. The memo made clear that Al Qaeda in Iraq was speaking through Muhammad Al Adnani, who is now the senior spokesman for the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Western and Gulf states were supporting the terrorist group to try to overthrow Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad, who was being propped up by the Russians, Iranians, and Chinese. In August 2012, a “SECRET” classified memo was sent to various top...

<p>Turkey says the Kurds are allied with the butcher of Damascus, Bashar al-Assad — the man whose power Russia fights to preserve.</p> <p>The Turks are angry with us for supporting the Kurds, but it’s Russia’s air bombardments that keep them awake at night. Putin, meanwhile, won’t easily forget that Turkey shot down a Russian plane earlier this winter, and now tells pilots not to await orders when they encounter suspicious aircraft near the Syrian-Turkish border.</p>

In Al Jazeera’s latest Head to Head episode, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn confirms to Mehdi Hasan that not only had he studied the DIA memo predicting the West’s backing of an Islamic State in Syria when it came across his desk in 2012, but even asserts that the White House’s sponsoring of radical jihadists (that would emerge as ISIL and Nusra) against the Syrian regime was “a willful decision.” Amazingly, Flynn actually took issue with the way interviewer Mehdi Hasan posed the question—Flynn seemed to want to make it clear that the policies that led...

President Barack Obama has authorized the use of air power to defend a new U.S.-backed fighting force in Syria should it come under attack from Syrian government forces or other groups, officials said, in a move that could increase the risk of the U.S. coming into direct conflict with the Assad regime. The decision ends a months’ long debate over the role the U.S. military should play in supporting its few allies on the battlefield and comes as the U.S. and Turkey discussed joint operations to clear a zone along the Turkish-Syrian border of Islamic State militants. Turkish officials wanted...

On Friday, we checked in on the Pentagon’s ongoing effort to recruit, vet, and train ambitious "freedom fighters" to join the battle against ISIS in Syria. It goes without saying that covert US efforts to aid the multifarious groups vying for control of the country have met with disastrous consequences so far, but if there’s anything Washington is particularly adept at, it’s making bad foreign policy outcomes worse, which is why we weren’t at all surprised to learn that the commander of the Pentagon's new Syrian "force" was captured, along with his deputy, by al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra last week near...

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has begun to move his arsenal of advanced weapons underground in preparation for a possible strike on the country by the United States, Israel’s Channel 1o reported on Wednesday. Since learning of U.S. President Obama’s desire to attack Syria, Assad ‘s forces have begun to move the weapons, including possibly chemical warheads, into underground bunkers. The process was accelerated when Damascus realized that the U.S. strike would not be a surprise and in fact would be delayed by a Congressional vote, Channel 10 said. The underground facilities are similar to those built by Iran near the...

By now it should be obvious that whenever the U.S. interferes in another nation’s politics in the name of “human rights,” that is only a pretext. So it is in Syria, as Obama prepares to plunge America in a war with that nation and, inevitably, its allies. The United States’ stated reason for intervention, as articulated by John Kerry, is that Syrian President Assad used chemical weapons on the rebels, many of whom are jihadis — including terrorists, rapists, and cannibals – and thus violated their human rights. Kerry is certainly consistent. Earlier he worried about the “human rights” of...

President Barack Obama faces a clear uphill battle in swaying skeptical lawmakers of the merits of military action in Syria, as top officials were dispatched to Capitol Hill Sunday to make the administration’s case. For example, Senate Democratic aides are drafting new language for an authorization of military force in Syria, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said Sunday. The administration’s proposal is too open-ended — a complaint many lawmakers have — Leahy said after leaving the classified briefing. The current version wouldn’t garner his support, but he indicated that a more tightly written draft might. “I know it’s going to be...

Chancellor Angela Merkel and her challenger in Germany's upcoming election have both said they wouldn't participate in military action against Syria. Merkel said that "Germany will not participate" in a military strike as she faced center-left rival Peer Steinbrueck during a televised debate Sunday before the Sept. 22 vote.

Syrians inside the country say the revolution began with peaceful protests from the poor seeking reforms. The movement now brims with violent terrorist operatives aligned with Al Qaeda and Al-Nasra, including extremist fighters from Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq. The mainstream media portrays a false picture of the now-compromised Free Syrian Army. The extremist elements within are not just minority-affiliates. They win the battles, they have the ammunition and the food. They have slowly filled the power vaccuum and they do not fight for a freed Syria, but to establish an ultra-fundamentalist state. American taxpayers have fueled the Syrian Civil War...

David Cameron and US Secretary of State John Kerry secretly ganged up to persuade a nervous Barack Obama to back Britain’s bid to arm Syrian rebels, it was revealed last night. The Prime Minister and Mr Kerry’s diplomatic ambush of President Obama succeeded when they won his support for a showdown with Russia’s Vladimir Putin – a key ally of Syria’s President Assad – when Mr Cameron hosts a G8 summit in Northern Ireland tomorrow. Obama’s surprise U-turn came 24 hours after Foreign Secretary William Hague slipped into Washington almost completely unnoticed to meet Mr Kerry. In recent weeks, while...