Syria's war to get dirtier than ever

[Paul E Ester]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by NancyBlueINOklahoma (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: Herald Scotland

From small clandestine offices in countries as far flung as Qatar, Jordan, Turkey and Croatia, US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers have acted as brokers and overseers of a massive arms shipment programme to Syria's opposition rebels.

With the operation shrouded in secrecy, the CIA declines to comment publicly on the arms supply. US officials instead talk of its existence in a kind of coded doublespeak referring to "a maturing of the opposition's logistical pipeline."

But exist it definitely does, and according to arms-trafficking investigators who are monitoring data on the weapons' supplies, the scale of the shipments is huge.

"A conservative estimate of the payload of these flights would be 3500 tons of military equipment," confirmed Hugh Griffiths, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in a recent detailed analysis of the illicit transfer outlined in a New York Times (NYT) investigation.


Read more: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/world-news/syrias-war-to-get-dirtier-than-ever.20789863

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On Friday the UN Security Council began informal talks on imposing sanctions on the al-Nusra Front after it pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri.

[Purveyor]

1. Also read: Syrian Rebels’ Pledge Of Allegiance To al Qaeda Complicates Western Intervention Strateg

The West is floundering over how to respond to Syria’s worsening civil war, especially after a leading Islamist rebel group pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda, opposition officials and experts say.

The move by the Al-Nusra Front this week has complicated efforts by US and European officials to come up with unified strategy to support the rebels battling the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

After pushing for weeks to lift a European embargo so arms could be supplied to the rebels, France and Britain have recently backed away from the initiative amid fears weapons could fall into the wrong hands.

--CLIP
“There will never be any guarantees of where the arms will end up. And there will never be a total lifting of the European embargo,” he said.

MORE...

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/04/12/syrian-rebels-pledge-of-allegiance-to-al-qaeda-complicates-western-intervention-strategies/

[cheapdate]

2. We should be doing this out in the open...

if we're going to do it at all. We should publicly acknowledge who we are arming -- who we are working with -- who's in charge. I don't see how anything is gained by doing it secretly. In this first place, It makes it harder to accomplish for those who are doing the arming. In the second place, why the secrecy? Is it just because that's the only way the CIA knows how to operate?

[MrSlayer]

3. This is senseless.

I guess it's all about the money but this is just stupid. Why are we involved at all? It's none of our business and these fucks are Taliban, al-qaeda types. We shouldn't be in this in any way.

[magellan]

6. +1

There's nothing we've done in the Middle East to be proud of. Nothing. Why we're wasting money on Syria while cutting crucial public services at home, I don't know. It's heartless and I don't care to understand whatever drives it. I only know the government is not in the hands of the people. Their motivations aren't ours.

[magellan]

6. Dupe

[Comrade Grumpy]

4. The US is doing its best to ensure that thousands more Syrians die.

This is some dirty, lowdown shit. That's what the CIA specializes in, always has. DU hero Valerie Plame notwithstanding, this is an agency of thugs, torture, assassination, and secret armies. Fuck realpolitik. We don't need this. We don't need to become the monster we are ostensibly fighting.

[OKNancy]

8. Locking - not breaking news

This is not a breaking news article. This is a background/analysis piece.
You can re-post in another forum if you like.