Financing rebels in syria: July 31, 2012 The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control approved a license last week allowing the Syrian Support Group "to engage in otherwise prohibited financial activities with the Free Syrian Army," Treasury spokesman John Sullivan said Tuesday. The license doesn't permit the group to ship military equipment or hardware, but it does authorize it to send financial aid. "The big one is financing. That for the most part is fairly open," said Brian Sayers, director of government relations for the support group. The Syrian Support Group was established earlier this year to lobby for U.S. backing for the Free Syrian Army. It includes Syrian expatriates and works with retired Syrian military officers, Louay Sakka, a Syrian-Canadian co-founder of the group, said in a June interview. Mr. Sayers, its director of government relations, is a former political officer at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. http://online.wsj.com/article...56.html
Hillary Clinton admits the CIA created and supported terrorist group to defeat Russians in Afghanistan and Pakistan: July 19, 2010 CLINTON: Because when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan we had this brilliant idea we were going to come to Pakistan and create a force of mujahedeen and equip them with stinger missiles and everything else to go after the Soviets inside Afghanistan.
And we were successful. The Soviets left Afghanistan, and then we said great, good-bye, leaving these trained people, who were fanatical, in Afghanistan and Pakistan, leaving them well-armed, creating a mess, frankly, that at the time we didn't really recognize, we were just so happy to see the Soviet Union fall and we thought fine we are OK now everything is going to be so much better.
Now you look back. The people we are fighting today, we were supporting in the fight the soviets.
Remember when the news was screaming about those evil muslims teaching little kids to die for Allah? CIA helped promote and teach Jihadists: Page 19 This was catastrophic for the northwestern frontier’s youth who saw madrasas as the only escape from their economically disadvantaged situation within the poverty-stricken region. The system served two causes: it brought starving youth from all over the Afghani and Pakistani countryside to Peshawar for a chance to be fed, clothed, and housed for free, and it indoctrinated them with a militant mindset. Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the CIA promoted this mindset as well as other nations that were actively supporting state-sponsored militancy (CIA, 2002). These madrasas became militant recruiting centers where children were taught the Quran alongside radical theories about of Islamic Jihad. The extremism fostered there was a major cause of the fundamentalist attitudes that permeate Peshawar to this day. An entire generation of Pakistani Muslim youth was taught that death in the name of Allah against the infidels was the greatest good they could hope to achieve. 9Darul Uloom Haqqania is a prime example of the militant-breeding ground in Peshawar. One of the largest institutions in all of Pakistan this madrasa is notoriously known as the “cradle of the Taliban.” Darul Uloom is a fundamental Sunni school funded by Saudi oil money and USAID. USAID had the University of Nebraska-Omaha print textbooks to hand out in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the Soviet invasion. These texts promoted extreme jihadism. They taught the importance of the Jihad and math side-by-side. Students learned to count by numbering off dead Russians and Kalashnikov rifles (Ottaway, J. S., 2002). http://epubs.utah.edu/index.php/HJP/article/viewFile/306/251
Russia is "morally bankrupt" Pot meet kettle: The Obama administration on Friday accused Russia of pursuing a "morally bankrupt" policy in Syria, following Turkey's seizure of alleged Russian military equipment from a Syrian plane headed from Moscow to Damascus.
The State Department said it had "grave concern" that Russia is continuing to supply Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime with materiel that could be used to bolster its fight against rebels. http://www.foxnews.com/politic...ankrupt
October 14, 2012: The United States is not sending arms directly to the Syrian opposition. Instead, it is providing intelligence and other support for shipments of secondhand light weapons like rifles and grenades into Syria, mainly orchestrated from Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The reports indicate that the shipments organized from Qatar, in particular, are largely going to hard-line Islamists.
The assessment of the arms flows comes at a crucial time for Mr. Obama, in the closing weeks of the election campaign with two debates looming that will focus on his foreign policy record. But it also calls into question the Syria strategy laid out by Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger.
In a speech at the Virginia Military Institute last Monday, Mr. Romney said he would ensure that rebel groups “who share our values” would “obtain the arms they need to defeat Assad’s tanks, helicopters and fighter jets.” That suggests he would approve the transfer of weapons like antiaircraft and antitank systems that are much more potent than any the United States has been willing to put into rebel hands so far, precisely because American officials cannot be certain who will ultimately be using them. http://www.nytimes.com/2012...ll&_r=0
October 14, 2012, Mark Field of British Parliament: Already thousands have left, part of a larger tide of displaced Syrians escaping the conflict in which opposition groups say 27,000 people have died. In the Homs area 80,000 have fled as churches and community centres have been targeted, defaced, and their religious icons stolen. Whilst it is true that some Christians have held prominent positions under Assad they have also taken leading roles in the political opposition to Assad's rule, there are other Christians, like George Sabra, who ran for presidency of the opposition Syrian National Council, who have been staunchly anti-Assad. The Iraqi example
These Christians are now abroad, staying with friends, in gardens or in churches in Lebanon, in Turkey, anywhere out of the firing line. Some have resorted to taking the Government's side and bearing arms, a move anathema to them throughout history. What my Syrian Christian constituents fear is that once gone, there will be no coming back. A rebel victory and a harder Islamist regime, may very well not want the return of a pluralist society, with Christians living alongside Shiite and Sunni Muslims as they have since biblical times.
Events in Iraq provide us with a timely example. Amidst savage bloodletting between Sunnis and Shiites in the aftermath of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the story of Iraq’s Christian population is one that is rarely told. But since the invasion it is estimated that half their number has desperately been driven to exile outside the country. http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...99.html
I thought Iran was our main bad guy in the ME. When did it switch to Syria? It's all so confusing.
-------------- And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
yet we keep spending BILLIONS on aid and military support all around the world
Aggression, not support. We need to quit meddling in other countries affairs altogether. We go in and decimate other countries for decades under the guise of "humanitarianism". Our government is not the good guys.
-------------- And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
It's better to let extremists execute girls for wanting an education?
QUOTE
Malala Yousafzai (Pashto: ملاله یوسفزۍ Malālah Yūsafzay, born 12 July 1997)[2][3] is a school student from the town of Mingora in Swat District, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan. She is known for her education and women’s rights activism in the Swat Valley, where the Taliban has at times banned girls from attending school.[4][3] In early 2009, at the age of 11, Yousafzai came to prominence through a blog she wrote for the BBC detailing her life under Taliban rule, their attempts to take control of the valley, and her views on promoting education for girls.[10] The following summer, a New York Times documentary[3] was filmed about her life as the Pakistani military intervened in the region, culminating in the Second Battle of Swat.[11] Yousafzai began to rise in prominence, giving interviews in print and on television,[12] and taking a position as chairperson of the District Child Assembly Swat.[13] She has since been nominated for the International Children's Peace Prize by Desmond Tutu,[14] and has won Pakistan's first National Youth Peace Prize.[4]
On 9 October 2012, Yousafzai was shot in the head and neck in an assassination attempt by Taliban gunmen while returning home on a school bus.[15] In the days following the attack, she remained unconscious and in critical condition,[16] but has since improved enough to be sent to a hospital in the United Kingdom, where she will receive intensive rehabilitation. A group of 50 Islamic clerics in Pakistan have issued a fatwā against those who tried to kill her.[17] The Taliban reiterated its intent to kill Yousafzai and her father, Ziauddin.[18]
It's better to let extremists execute girls for wanting an education?
And what about the US role in creating more extremists? By providing school books and teachings to little kids that brainwashed them into believing extremist jihad?
So you think the US should go into every country that has a few nutballs doing horrible things to people, bomb the crap out of it, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the process? Is that what you are saying?
Ok, when is it OUR turn to have a country stomp the hell out of us? People getting fired from their jobs and going back with guns blazing is ok? People walking into movie theaters and schools and blasting everyone is ok? People murdering their children because they don't want to be bothered with them anymore is morally acceptable to you? People abducting, raping, torturing and murdering children is just fine with you? How about little Jessica Lunsford? - I will never get that horror story out of my head. But things like that are more palatable to you?
No, I am not excusing what those religious zealots did to that girl, or what any of those zealots do to harm anyone. But really Liberal, the US is so much higher up the moral scale?
-------------- And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
Ok, when is it OUR turn to have a country stomp the hell out of us? People getting fired from their jobs and going back with guns blazing is ok?
Were you dropped on your head as a child? How do you make the jump between religious violence in the middle east and workplace shootings in America? Are you so delusional as to believe that people that think we have a moral obligation to help those in need around the world somehow agrees with workplace violence, rape, abductions, and mass shootings?
-------------- The people are masters of both Congress and courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it!
I think what Ros is trying to point out here is, we are so busy going into the problems of other nations, while we have a whole lot of bad things taking place right here.
Are you so delusional as to believe that people that think we have a moral obligation to help those in need around the world somehow agrees with workplace violence, rape, abductions, and mass shootings?
Moral obligation to help those in need around the world.
How moral is it to invade other countries, bomb the crap out of them and kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people?
I hope our country never needs help like that.
And why is one type of sick twisted nutball more offensive than other types of sick twisted nutballs?
-------------- And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
Are you so delusional as to believe that people that think we have a moral obligation to help those in need around the world somehow agrees with workplace violence, rape, abductions, and mass shootings? 