• Tag Archives Syria

  • Marco Rubio endorses arming al-Qaeda in Syria

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    News broke last week that the Obama Administration decided further its involvement in the Syrian civil war by arming rebels fighting against Bashar Assad’s regime. The development was well-received by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John McCain (R-AZ), two of Washington’s most hawkish politicians. But increasing our intervention in Syria remains a hot topic among conservatives, especially among two who may seek the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2016.

    This past weekend at the Faith Freedom Coalition’s conference in Washington, DC, two very distinict foreign policy agendas were put before conservatives. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) took a skeptical approach to Syria, explaining that intervention there doesn’t serve America’s interests. And it would seem that Americans overwhelmingly agree with that sentiment.

    Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) endorsed the idea of an active approach to foreign policy, though he didn’t mention Syria specifically. However, he didn’t skip around the issue during an appearance on This Week:

    During an exclusive interview on “This Week,” Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio criticized President Obama for not intervening sooner in Syria’s civil war, saying the inaction has led to the “worst possible scenario” in the war-torn country.

    “It behooved us to kind of identify whether there was elements there within Syria fighting against Assad that we could work with, reasonable people that wouldn’t carry out human rights violations, and could be part of building a new Syria. We failed to do that. This president failed to do that,” Rubio told ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl.

    “The fact that it’s taken this White House and this president so long to get a clear and concise policy on Syria has left us with the worst possible scenario right now,” Rubio added.

    “So now your options are quite limited. Now the strongest groups fighting against Assad, unfortunately, are al Qaeda-linked elements. That doesn’t mean that they all are, but it certainly — this group has become the most organized, the best armed, the best equipped. Our options are now really narrower than they were a few months ago,” he said.

    As noted, furthering our involvement is a terrible idea. America has no interest in Syria and our involvement will do little more than help install a new government with ties to Islamic radicals who will be openly hostile to the United States. One need only look to Libya and the assault on the American outpost in Benghazi for a recent example of that.

    Additionally, American taxpayers shouldn’t be funding a group that is identified as a terrorist organization with ties to al-Qaeda. CNN reported yesterday that the situation may be more dire than Rubio and other realize.

    Full article: http://www.unitedlib … ng-al-qaeda-in-syria


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  • Obama’s Syria Policy Looks A Lot Like Bush’s Iraq Policy

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    President Obama announced late last week that the US intelligence community had just determined that the Syrian government had used poison gas on a small scale, killing some 100 people in a civil conflict that has claimed an estimated 100,000 lives. Because of this use of gas, the president claimed, Syria had crossed his “red line” and the US must begin to arm the rebels fighting to overthrow the Syrian government.

    Setting aside the question of why 100 killed by gas is somehow more important than 99,900 killed by other means, the fact is his above explanation is full of holes. The Washington Post reported this week that the decision to overtly arm the Syrian rebels was made “weeks ago” – in other words, it was made at a time when the intelligence community did not believe “with high confidence” that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons.

    Further, this plan to transfer weapons to the Syrian rebels had become policy much earlier than that, as the Washington Post reported that the CIA had expanded over the past year its secret bases in Jordan to prepare for the transfer of weapons to the rebels in Syria.

    The process was identical to the massive deception campaign that led us into the Iraq war.

    via Obama’s Syria Policy Looks A Lot Like Bush’s Iraq Policy


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  • Friction between McCain, Paul underscores divide within Republican Party

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Arizona Sen. John McCain are once again banging heads – this time over whether to arm Syrian rebels – in the latest dispute that underscores a divide in the GOP and intensifies the fight over what the party will represent in 2016 and beyond.

    Paul, a first-term senator and Tea Party favorite surging in popularity, took the latest shot by opposing aid to the rebels – a key part of McCain’s plan to end the two-year Syrian civil war in which 70,000 civilians and others have been killed.

    “It is very clear that any attempt to aid the Syrian rebels would be complicated and dangerous, precisely because we don’t know who these people are,” Paul wrote in an opinion piece earlier this week. “The situation in Syria is certainly dire. … Al Qaeda is making confirmed inroads into the country. No one wants to see Syria become a bastion of extremism. But like other American interventions in the past, U.S. involvement could actually help the extremists.”

    But McCain, fresh off a secret trip to Syria, on Friday upped his call for intervention — telling the Associated Press the opposition needs heavy weapons.

    McCain and Paul split last month as members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when McCain, elected to Congress in 1983, voted in favor of the Syria Transition Act, which calls for “limited lethal and non-lethal assistance and training to vetted Syrian groups.”

    Paul voted against the bill and warned in his op-ed Thursday for CNN that the U.S. now “has reason to believe” that Libyan rebels who helped overthrow dictator Moammar Gadhafi and whom McCain appeared to supported in 2011 were in fact connected to al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists.

    The bill passed by a 13-5 vote.

    Full article: http://www.foxnews.c … in-republican-party/


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