Seymour Hersh: US knowingly armed ISIS

[leveymg]

16. This is Hersh's real story - regime change over stopping terrorism - and this names the source.

Last edited Sun Jan 3, 2016, 11:51 AM - Edit history (2)

The JCS were right to pushback against the covert policy of arming the Jihadi opposition initiated by CIA Director Petraeus and Secretary of State Clinton being pursued at the time.

Hersh writes that a highly classified 2013 Defense Intelligence Agency/Joint Chiefs of Staff report on Syria forecast that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to "chaos" and possibly to Islamist extremists taking over Syria.

Hersh reports that Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, told him that his agency sent a "constant stream" of warnings to the "civilian leadership" about the dire consequences of ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The DIA's reporting "got enormous pushback" from the Obama administration, Hersh quotes Flynn as saying. "I felt that they did not want to hear the truth."

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2015/12/27/Seymour-Hersh-report-on-Syria-White-House-knew-US-was-arming-Islamic-State/6951451232210/

The report, published in the Jan. 7, 2016 edition of the London Review of Books, relies heavily on an anonymous former senior adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Hersh writes that the adviser told him the DIA/Joint Chiefs report took a "dim view" of the Obama administration's insistence on continuing to finance and arm the so-called moderate rebel groups and found that the covert U.S. program to arm and support those "moderate" rebels fighting Assad had been co-opted by Turkey, which then morphed the program into an "across-the-board technical, arms and logistical program for all of the opposition, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State."

"The assessment was bleak: there was no viable 'moderate' opposition to Assad, and the U.S. was arming extremists," Hersh wrote.

In October, the Pentagon announced that it was discontinuing its program to train and equip moderate rebels in Syria, saying the program cost $500 million and only succeeded in training a "handful" of recruits.

In November, however, the CIA increased its shipments of arms to rebels in Syria, joining with U.S. allies in challenging Russia and Iran's involvement in Syria in support of the Assad regime.

U.S. officials, according to a Nov. 4 article in The Wall Street Journal, said the Obama administration is pursuing a dual-track strategy in Syria, to keep military pressure on Assad while U.S. diplomats "see if they can ease him from power through negotiations."

The White House has not responded directly to the allegations raised in the article in the London Review of Books.

Its author, Seymour Hersh, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for his reporting on the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War and has continued to write on national security for many newspapers and magazines, including The New Yorker. He was widely criticized for his The Killing of Osama bin Laden report that accused President Barack Obama and his administration of lying about the circumstances surrounding the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011. Many media establishments, intelligence analysts and officials, including the White House, rejected the claim.