CIA On Opposite Sides in Syria and Iraq
http://www.thenation.com/blog/173318/cia-opposite-sides-syria-and-iraq#
CIA On Opposite Sides in Syria and Iraq
Robert Dreyfuss on March 13, 2013 - 9:17 AM ET
What, really, could be more bizarre than this: as the United States ramps up its aid to Syria’s rag-tag rebels, whose backbone is comprised of radical Islamists and Sunni fundamentalists, some with ties to Al Qaeda, the CIA is busily engaged in combat inside Iraq with the very same radical Islamists and Sunni fundamentalists, some with ties to Al Qaeda.
Yep, that’s right.
We’re backing the same guys in Syria that we’re fighting in Iraq.
…snip…
The paradox, obviously, is that Maliki, the guy we’re helping in Iraq, is an ally of Iran’s and is sympathetic to President Assad of Syria. That’s because were the Sunni-led rebels in Syria to seize Damascus and topple Assad, they’d turn their wrath next door against the Shiite-led Maliki regime, and funnel weapons and fighters to support the Sunni-led rebels in Iraq.
That’s not stopping the United States, though, from boosting the fortunes of the Syrian rebels by funneling aid and support to them and coordinating the flow of weapons from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, Meanwhile, as the New York Times has been reporting for a while, the same CIA that is trying to squash the Sunni rebels in Iraq is actually training Sunni rebels in a secret program in Jordan, to fight in Syria.
Oddly enough, the rest of the media hasn’t picked up on the Times’ reports on the CIA training efforts in Jordan, and the Times itself hasn’t elaborated. How many gangsters are is the CIA training in Jordan? What are they doing?
It all comes together in the recent reports that dozens of Syrian soldiers, loyal to Assad, who fled into Iraq recently, were then massacred by Iraqi Sunni crazies.
We blundered, bungling, into Iraq in 2003 without knowing really a damn thing about the country we invaded. When will the United States learn that it doesn’t know enough about the Middle East to go charging in there with guns, seemingly without a clue about what it all means?