Via Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog [5],
I have made comments about this on many occasions over the past several months, as even mainstream media outlets have covered the fact that our allies, the “Syrian rebels,” actually have a large “Al Qaeda” element to them (whatever the hell that means).
To me this is just further proof that our foreign policy is a complete joke, run by a bunch of insane chicken hawks in Washington D.C.
From McClatchy:
QALAT AL MUDIQ, Syria — When the group Jabhat al Nusra first claimed responsibility for car and suicide bombings in Damascus that killed dozens last January, many of Syria’s revolutionaries claimed that the organization was a creation of the Syrian government, designed to discredit those who opposed the regime of President Bashar Assad and to hide the regime’s own brutal tactics.
Nearly a year later, however, Jabhat al Nusra, which U.S. officials believe has links to al Qaida, has become essential to the frontline operations of the rebels fighting to topple Assad.
The prominence of Nusra in the rebel cause worries U.S. and other Western officials, who say its operations rely on the same people and tactics that fueled al Qaida in Iraq – an assertion that is borne out by interviews with Nusra members in Syria.
Among Nusra fighters are many Syrians who say they fought with al Qaida in Iraq, which waged a bloody and violent campaign against the U.S. presence in that country and is still blamed for suicide and car bombings that have killed hundreds of Iraqis since the U.S. troops left a year ago.
Nusra’s rise is most evident in Syria’s north and east, where anti-Assad forces have recently been racking up impressive military gains. Gone are the days just five months ago when Nusra’s actions seemed limited to car and suicide bombings. Now, Nusra fighters are organized in battalion-sized groups that are often armed with heavy weaponry.
“When we finish with Assad, we will fight the U.S.!” one Nusra fighter shouted in the northeastern Syrian city of Ras al Ayn when he was told an American journalist present. He laughed as he said it and then got into a van and drove off, leaving the journalist unable to ask whether it had been a joke.
Did you catch that? We are literally allied with some of the same fighters that we battled in Iraq! The bigger point is we are supposed to be willing to give up our freedoms and civil liberties to fight an enemy that we are supporting in Syria? Our “leaders” have no shame.
Full article here [6].