The New York Times made a similar statement.
“Nowhere in rebel-controlled Syria is there a secular fighting force to speak of,” the newspaper reported in 2013.
Now, Fox News has interviewed one of these rebels who admitted he handed over US weapons directly to al-Qaeda.
“I communicated with al-Qaeda’s branch, Al Nusra, to protect and safely escort me and my soldiers for two hours from North Aleppo to West Aleppo,” Maj. Anas Ibrahim Obaid told Fox News from his home in the western Aleppo area. “In exchange, I gave them five pickup trucks and ammunition.”
Fox News also reported that “those trucks and ammo were issued to him by the United States in 2015, part of a $500 million Department of Defense effort to ‘train and equip’ a new ‘ideologically moderate’ force to battle ISIS.”
As Infowars reported on Dec. 12, 2014, this half-billion dollar effort was part of the $1.1 trillion federal spending bill rammed through Congress that year.
Section 9016 of the 2014 spending bill authorizes the Secretary of Defense $500,000,000 to equip “appropriately vetted elements of the Syrian opposition” who will defend “the Syrian people from attacks by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.”
But as Infowars also reported, in Sept. 2014 ISIS signed a truce with the remaining “moderate rebel” groups to work together against the Syrian government.
“We are collaborating with the Islamic State and the Nusra Front by attacking the Syrian Army’s gatherings in… Qalamoun,” Bassel Idriss, the commander of a “moderate rebel” brigade, told the Lebanese Daily Star in 2014.
Another commander, Abu Khaled, said his “moderate rebel” group had “reached a point where we have to collaborate with anyone against unfairness and injustice [of the Assad government].”
“Let’s face it: The Nusra Front is the biggest power present right now in Qalamoun and we as FSA would collaborate on any mission they launch as long as it coincides with our values,” he added.
In other words, the “ideologically moderate” rebels were no longer independent in 2015, having long since been absorbed into al-Qaeda affiliated groups, just as Maj. Obaid pointed out.
“The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, have taken advantage of a power vacuum in rebel-held areas to assert its authority over more moderate elements of the armed opposition,” Reuters reported in 2013.
The better-equipped and better-trained ISIS militants quickly emerged as the dominant fighting force against the Assad government, meaning that Congress’s dream to arm “appropriately vetted elements” was, by 2014, an easily-debunked fantasy.
But that didn’t stop President Obama from resupplying the “moderate rebels” again in 2015, just as Infowars reported.
Internally, however, the Obama administration knew it was arming jihadists.
“The Salafist [sic], the Muslim Brotherhood and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” a leaked 2012 memo between her State Dept. and the Pentagon stated. “The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support [this] opposition, while Russia, China and Iran ‘support the [Assad] regime.’”
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