“Al Qaeda R Us”: John McCain’s “Moderate Rebels” in Syria are ISIS

Monday 22 February 2016

“Al Qaeda R Us”: John McCain’s “Moderate Rebels” in Syria are ISIS

First published in January 2015. John McCain’s links to the terrorists.

Poor John McCain and Lindsey Graham, Washington’s original first couple. They only want to arm the ‘moderate opposition’ in Syria. Three years on, how come their master plan isn’t working, while ISIS has grown so strong?

Despite what media lauded as, “the largest demonstration in France’s history – bigger than liberation at the end of WWII!” (can you rightly compare the two), the Paris Attacks are fading fast into the rear view mirror. The media went to great lengths to reinforce the scary prospect of the ‘ISIS in Europe’, even though there is spurious, if any, real evidence to support that claim. Nonetheless, a lack of evidence has never stopped the media from conjuring up a frightening new trend.

In the light of the recent Paris Attacks it’s more important than ever to take a sober look, and perhaps shine a light on the fact that there are no real ‘moderate rebels’ in Syria, no more than there are in Iraq.

On Tuesday during his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama touted great strides in “halting the advance of ISIS” with US-led airstrikes in Syria and Iraq. Today, US Ambassador Stuart Jones announced that “Coalition Airstrikes” (US airstrikes) have killed 6,000 ISIS , how the US is able to conjure up such incredible Jack and the Beanstalk-style numbers (all but impossible to verify) is beyond anyone outside of Washington. You just have to take his word for it. Just like we just had to take US Ambassador to the Ukraine’s word for it – when Geoffrey Pyatt Tweeted a few random Digital Globe images claiming that the Russians invaded Ukraine, again.After six or so ‘Russian Invasion’ false starts, we’re still waiting for evidence beyond Twitter.

The lies and creative accounting have been palpable since the beginning of the US airstrikes in Syria. Early strikes weren’t actually against ISIS, but rather against a number of impressive empty buildings, and buildings which were curiously evacuated days before the US conducted the raids. How interesting.

This brings us to the issue of who ISIS really is, and how did ISIS build up to the level they are at today. It’s a particularly embarrassing thing to admit, because when you allow this fact out of the bag, then skeptics start asking more questions, and if there’s one thing that politicians hate more than anything, it’s facts and questions.

So, what happened to all of McCain’s “moderate opposition”? You know, the ones which President Obama, John Kerry, David Cameron and the rest of the ‘liberate Syria’ gang insist need our help with more weapons and cash? New Eastern Outlook geopolitical analysis and writer Tony Cartalucci explains:

Reported along the peripheries of the Western media, it was reported recently that some 3,000 so-called “moderate rebels” of the “Free Syrian Army” had defected to the “Islamic State” (ISIS). While not the first time so-called “moderates” have crossed over openly to Al Qaeda or ISIS, it is one of the largest crossovers that has occurred. With them, these 3,000 fighters will bring weapons, cash, equipment, and training provided to them by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United States, the UK, and perhaps most ironic of all in the wake of the recent terror attack in Paris, France. Indeed, ISIS and Al Qaeda’s ranks continue to swell amid this insidious network of “terror laundering” that is only set to grow.

This means there’s no “moderate rebels” to speak of, so therefore ISIS is McCain’s Army. Washington’s nation-builders are banking on the fact that Americans are not smart enough, or too brain-dead to work this one out.

ISIS: CIA’s Twitter-friendly, “cut-out” mercenary army.

Since 2012, the war-obsessed Senator has dedicated a little too much of his valuable taxpayer-funded time to lobbying for more arms and more cash for his “freedom fighters” in Syria, fighters who are well-known outside of Washington to be all but ubiquitous with violent terrorist fighting groups al Qaeda, al Nusra, Front Victory and ISIS/ISIL/IS. Ten years of war theater in Iraq was time enough to cultivate and develop al Qaeda and Islamic State ‘death squads’ under US destabilization experts like John Negoponte and Robert Ford. Top ISIS fighting units grew directly out of Negoponte’s Death Squads from 2005 onwards. Death Suad recruits were hand-picked and drawn from the Shia, Kurdish, and some Sunni resistance militias, as well as foreign fighter insurgents and other ‘soldiers of fortune’ in Iraq. Death squads were designed to divide and disrupt communities and any remaining Sunnis and Shi’ite oppositions to the US occupation in Iraq. In addition, mythologies were erected, like the one surrounding actor-leaders like ‘al-Baghdadi’ (more on him below).

The first hint we had of Washington’s desert rat installment Operation Fast and Furious, came in September 2012, when a rented villa in Libya’s port city of Benghazi went up in flames. Later we find out that the makeshift ‘embassy’ was really part of a clandestine CIA complex where the US was organizing the shipment of ex-Gaddafi arms stocks over to Washington’s burgeoning new bloodbath in Syria.

Many Americans and other followers of this story may still be unaware that, Abdel Hakim-Belhadj (photo, left), the al Qaeda lieutenant who the US held at ‘Penny Lane’ in Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) and then subsequently turned (or debriefed) by the CIA, and released back into the field as a double agent, leading the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group on behalf of NATO in their effort to overthrow Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2010-2011. WNDreported this week that The Citizen’s Commission on Benghazi’s interim report, revealed how “the U.S. was fully aware of and facilitating the delivery of weapons to the Al Qaeda-dominated rebel militias throughout the 2011 rebellion”, an illegal operation carried out behind the back of Congress, andunder management of then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. After toppling the Gaddafi gov’t, Washington rewarded Hakim-Belhadj with the position of Governor of Tripoli, after which time, he played a key roll in the continual recruitment and further redeployment of battle-hardenedLibyan jihadist fighters over to Syria. There is also the issue of Muslim Brotherhood members and their al Qaeda affiliations, embedded in NATO-backed Transnational Council (TNC) government in Libya, during and after, the fall of Gaddafi, which was explained by Dr Jerome Corsi in the WND story. Along with the fighters, more weapons, comprised of ex-Gaddafi arms stocks, also had to be moved from Libya, through Turkey and into Syria.

To clarify, Libyan Islamic fighting groups who worked hand-in-hand with US, British and French, and NATO intelligence agencies to topple Gaddafi in 2011 – were openly flying the al Qaeda and ISIS ‘black flag’ after Gaddafi’s gov’t collapsed, before and during the time they were shipped on to fight in Syria against Bashar al Assad’s gov’t forces – on behalf of those very same NATO-allied agencies.

WND’s report continues:

In early 2011, before Gadhafi was deposed, Christopher Stevens came to Benghazi in a cargo ship, and his title at the time was envoy to the Libyan rebels,’ which basically means Christopher Stevens was America’s very first envoy to al-Qaida,” explained Clare Lopez, a member of the commission who served as a career operations officer with the CIA and currently is vice president for research at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy. At that time, Stevens was facilitating the delivery of weapons to the al-Qaida-related militia in Libya,” Lopez continued. “The weapons were produced at factories in Eastern Europe and shipped to a logistics hub in Qatar. The weapons were financed by the UAE and delivered via Qatar mostly on ships, with some possibly on airplanes, for delivery to Benghazi. The weapons were small arms, including Kalashnikovs, rocket-propelled grenades and lots of ammunition.”

“This was about weapons going into Libya, and Stevens is coordinating with Abdel Hakim Belhadj, the leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, other al-Qaida-affiliated militia leaders and leaders of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood that directed the rebellion against Qadhafi [Gaddafi] as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood,” Lopez said. “Many of the individual members of the al-Qaida-related militias, including the LIFG, and the groups that would later become Ansar Al-Sharia, were Muslim Brotherhood members first.”

To call it a scandal would be an understatement. What’s worst though, is how these events provided the catalyst for the ‘ISIS Crisis’ the world is facing today. Highly trained, well-armed, ruthless Islamic fighters do not grow on trees, and to think that many of the top ISIS generals and fighters were hand-picked, transferred, and equipped by the US and its NATO and Gulf allies – should be cause for grave concern.

Later on, NATO allies opted for a more consolidated effort to first be staged in Europe, and then on to Syria. The first major arms shipment on record was organized by the US, Britain and France in March 2013, in what is known as the Great Croatian Weapons Airlift, which comprised of 75 airplanes, and an estimated 3,000 tons of military weaponry – bound for Jordan.

Then we learned on Sept 13, 2013, how the CIA had openly announced financial and military aid to the “moderate rebels” (now ISIS recruits). US politicians were brimming with excitement at the time, proudly coming out of the closet on their brilliant new program. Mark S. Ward, the State Department’s senior adviser on assistance to Syria boasted, “This doesn’t only lead to a more effective force, but it increases its ability to hold coalition groups together.” Indeed. Look how effective ISIS has become. Nice work Mark.

It’s a cheap ploy: the idea that there’s some sort of “moderate rebel army” waiting in Syria and the surrounding western collaborator nations, like Jordan and Turkey. The reality is simply horrific – armed Salafist militants, whose true nature and existence is being shielded by lies and endless propaganda in the West – in an effort to wear down the media and then the public on this issue. ISIS is one giant mercenary army and organized crime organ – one which I have already referred to as 21st century ‘Sand Pirates’. For extra beer money, these privateers are targeting civilians, running kidnapping and sex rings, protection, extortion, ‘taxes’ and black markets for anything they can put their thumbs on; food, fuel, retail, property, transport and of course narcotics. They’re even collecting “international aid” and UN/NGO funds on the streets of Northern Syria. The CIA’s go-between in Syria is General Salim ‘Sam’ Idriss, leader of the ‘Free Syria Army’, which is merely a shop-front for the US State Department to conduct over-the-counter business and gain access, delivering kinds of aid to terrorist fighting groups and Death Squads in Syria and Iraq – in the exact same way that TNC-linked Libyan ‘Rebels’ were a shop-front which linked NATO to Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and al Qaeda (AQIM) paramilitaries in Libya.

According to a New York Times story published in 2007, the feared ISIS leader, Abdullah Rashid al-Baghdadi, never existed, according to Brigadier General Kevin Bergner – the chief American military spokesman at the time. Yes, ‘al-Baghdadi’, is a fictional character whose audio-taped declarations were provided by an elderly actor named Abu Adullah al-Naima.

A large number of McCain’s ‘freedom-lovers’ have been trained by the best – US and British special forces and contractors based in Jordan and Turkey. Weapons and funding have been steadily supplied by the US and its Gulf monarchs – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and others, Moreover, Israel has been consistently giving the “moderate rebels” aid and air support.

What’s the master plan? That’s debatable, as the opportunists of instability line up on all sides to accumulate what they can in chaos. Essentially what we are looking at is a US-led effort to over-run the region with the ISIS and ISIS-related scourge, killing all stability and ability for Syria, Iraq and Iran to coordinate any meaningful military, economic or political enterprise, like a major oil or gas pipeline connecting the Asian and European markets, for instance. To achieve this, a regionalsectarian bloodbath is required. This suits Saudi Arabia, as well as the US and Israel. A happy Axis. But it’s a raw deal for the region, and the damage being inflicted by this proxy disaster is certain to poison generations upon generations, destroying cities, villages, families and whole cultures in the process. For more background on the underlying policy and practice, it’s worth reading Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s New Yorker article, “”The Redirection: Is the Administration’s new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism?”.

If this all sounds too much for you, then it’s imperative to take a moment, and better understand exactly how you’re being programmed in this global, mass media psycho-drama…