CIA airlifting arms to Syrian jihadists, training others in Jordan

New post on Creeping Sharia   CIA airlifting arms to Syrian jihadists, training others in Jordan by creeping From the “they think we’re stupid” department (and check out the source): The United States is training secular Syrian fighters in Jordan in a bid to bolster forces battling President Bashar Assad’s regime and stem the influence of Islamist radicals among the country’s persistently splintered opposition, American and foreign officials said. The training has been conducted for several months now in an unspecified location, concentrating largely on Sunnis and tribal Bedouins who formerly served as members of the Syrian army, officials told The Associated Press. The forces aren’t members of the leading rebel group, the Free Syrian Army, which Washington and others fear may be increasingly coming under the sway of extremist militia groups, including some linked to al-Qaida, they said. Could it be on the Jordanian border where Obama sent troops last year and where arms are being flown into (see below)? The operation is being run by U.S. intelligence and is ongoing, officials said, but those in Washington stressed that the U.S. is providing only nonlethal aid at this point. Shocking, we know. via Arms Airlift to Syrian Rebels Expands, With C.I.A. Aid – NYTimes.com. With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders. The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, and, to a lesser degree, at other Turkish and Jordanian airports. As it evolved, the airlift correlated with shifts in the war within Syria, as rebels drove Syria’s army from territory by the middle of last year. And even as the Obama administration has publicly refused to give more than “nonlethal” aid to the rebels, the involvement of the C.I.A. in the arms shipments — albeit mostly in a consultative role, American officials say — has shown that the United States is more willing to help its Arab allies support the lethal side of the civil war. Most of the cargo flights have occurred since November, after the presidential election in the United States… Funny, the NYT reported on the gun-running to jihadis in August 2012, well before the elections. Then scrubbed it. “A conservative estimate of the payload of these flights would be 3,500 tons of military equipment,” said Hugh Griffiths, of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, who monitors illicit arms transfers. “The intensity and frequency of these flights,” he added, are “suggestive of a well-planned and coordinated clandestine military logistics operation.” Simultaneously, arms and equipment were being purchased by Saudi Arabia in Croatia and flown to Jordan on Jordanian cargo planes for rebels working in southern Syria… Coincidence? Obama sent US forces to protect Jordan. Who knew he meant protect the shipment of arms. And check this out, while Obama and Congress are busy using your tax dollars to fund and arm jihadists in Syria, Syria chemical weapons: finger pointed at jihadists. At what point do military brass get fed up with unlawful orders that do nothing to protect American citizens? URL: http://wp.me/pbU4v-ecz Comment    See all comments   Unsubscribe or change your email settings at Manage Subscriptions. Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/c-i-a-airlifting-arms-to-syrian-jihadists-as-kerry-tells-iraq-to-stop/     Thanks for flying with WordPress.com