Confirmed: US shipping weapons to Al Qaeda in Syria

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by Tony Cartalucci

While US President Barack Obama and the Western media lied in concert to the world regarding America's role in supporting terrorists operating in Syria, it is now revealed that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been shipping weapons to Syria via NATO-member Turkey and Jordan since at least early 2012.

The New York Times in their article titled, "Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With C.I.A. Aid," admits that:

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.

The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, and, to a lesser degree, at other Turkish and Jordanian airports.

The New York Times piece attempts to spin America's role in arming militants in Syria. The Times continues by stating:

The American government became involved, the former American official said, in part because there was a sense that other states would arm the rebels anyhow. The C.I.A. role in facilitating the shipments, he said, gave the United States a degree of influence over the process, including trying to steer weapons away from Islamist groups and persuading donors to withhold portable antiaircraft missiles that might be used in future terrorist attacks on civilian aircraft.

This is categorically false. Already, in 2007, US officials had divulged plans to destroy Syria by arming sectarian extremists, using Saudi Arabia and other regional actors as proxies to launder US and Israel support through - maintaining a degree of credibility amongst the terrorist receiving the aid, as well as a degree of plausible deniabiliy for Washington and Tel Aviv politically. In Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh's 2007 New Yorker article, "The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?" the strategy was described as follows:

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has cooperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

Perhaps more importantly, the report would also state:

Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.

Clearly, that "sense that other states would arm the rebels anyhow" was gleaned from premeditated conspiracies long-ago hatched between Washington, Tel Aviv, and Riyadh. And as the terrible consequences of this conspiracy come to fruition with tens of thousands dead, the West is eager to disclaim any and all responsibility, hoping sincerely that the public hasn't the collective memory or intelligence to pick up a newspaper from 2007 and read what they had already admitted to planning.

"Mystery" of Al Qaeda's al-Nusra sponsorship revealed

The confirmed admission implicates NATO directly in militarily intervening in Syria's ongoing conflict and reveals the source of arms and cash that have ended up primarily in the hands of Al Qaeda's Syrian franchise, US designated terror front, Jabhat al-Nusra. (see here for other examples of US arming listed terror organizations)

The CIA, Western media, and Western politicians insist that they have taken every precaution to ensure the now admitted torrent of cash and weapons that have been flowing into Syria to compound and perpetuate the bloodbath, did not end up in the hands of terrorists. However, no plausible explanation has been given as to where al-Nusra is getting its cash and weapons from, or how it has managed to eclipse the extensively Western-backed "moderates," to become the premier front in the fight against the Syrian people.

Indeed, the New York Times' article "Syrian Rebels Tied to Al Qaeda Play Key Role in War," states:

The lone Syrian rebel group with an explicit stamp of approval from Al Qaeda has become one of the uprising’s most effective fighting forces, posing a stark challenge to the United States and other countries that want to support the rebels but not Islamic extremists.

Money flows to the group, the Nusra Front, from like-minded donors abroad. Its fighters, a small minority of the rebels, have the boldness and skill to storm fortified positions and lead other battalions to capture military bases and oil fields. As their successes mount, they gather more weapons and attract more fighters.

The group is a direct offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Iraqi officials and former Iraqi insurgents say, which has contributed veteran fighters and weapons.

While the London Telegraph reports in their article, "Syria: how jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra is taking over Syria's revolution," that:

And in recent weeks it is Jabhat al-Nusra, a radical jihadist group blacklisted by the US as terrorists and a group that wants Syria to be an uncompromising Islamic state governed by sharia, that is holding sway.

The group is well funded - probably through established global jihadist networks - in comparison to moderates. Meanwhile pro-democracy rebel group commanders say money from foreign governments has all but dried up because of fears over radical Islamists.

The effect is changing the face of the Syrian crisis

"The group is well funded - probably through established global jihadist networks - in comparison to moderates." Could the London Telegraph be capable of such incomplete or incompetent reporting regarding what it seems to allude to as an unsolvable "mystery" regarding al-Nusra's sponsors?

In October of 2012, the Land Destroyer Report published, "NATO Using Al Qaeda Rat Lines to Flood Syria With Foreign Terrorists," which traced the logistical network now admitted to by the New York Times. This logistical network was then overlaid with Al Qaeda's regional networks, documented extensively during the US occupation of Iraq by the US Army's own West Point Combating Terrorism Center. The very regions along the Turkish-Syrian border, the Jordanian-Syrian border, and the Iraqi-Syrian border which served as recruiting and staging grounds for Al Qaeda terrorists during the Iraq War, now serve as the primary logistical hubs admittedly overseen by the CIA.

It is now admitted that thousands of tons of weapons have been smuggled into Syria by the US and its regional allies. While the Western media has attempted in the past to feign ignorance as to where Al Qaeda's al-Nusra was getting their weapons from, it is now abundantly clear - al-Nusra's power has expanded across Syria in tandem with the CIA's ever-expanding operations along the nation's borders. If the US is working directly with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, to arm militants, who else could possibly be working to arm and fund al-Nusra on a greater scale if not this axis itself?

This criminal conspiracy appears to have escaped the UN's competence and capabilities, requiring that states around the world mobilize an expedient response to the dangerous, unhinged and genocidal campaign being waged by the West against Syria. If the West refuses to end its direct fueling of the Syrian crisis or answer for how their weapons have ended up almost exclusively in al-Nusra's hands, Syria's allies must begin contemplating open and extensive aid to help the nation defend itself against overt international terrorism.

Reports indicate that it was al-Nusra who used chemical weapons in Syria's northern city of Aleppo, according to the London Telegraph. An Al Qaeda terror front wielding WMDs, we are told, is the sum of all fears and the ultimate impetus driving the unending "War on Terror." Through direct, intentional actions by the West itself, this nightmare has become a reality - one that must be addressed, lest the world descend into global anarchy or worse.

Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer. He has been published on many alternative media websites, including Alternative Thai News Network and LocalOrg. His writings deal with world events from a Southeast Asian perspective as well as promoting self-sufficiency as one of the keys to true freedom. His website is Land Destroyer Report.