France Armed Syrian Response Months Ago
Lost in the news coverage over the jihadist massacres in Paris is that just five months ago French President Francois Hollande publicly admitted France delivered weapons to Islamic rebels targeting the secular regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
While Hollande indicated the weapons were delivered to moderate rebel forces, the insurgency against Assad is largely led by Islamic extremists who far outnumber the moderates. Most analyses suggest it is those extremists who would gain the most from the toppling of the Syrian leader.
On August 21, Hollande confirmed to reporters that the weapons deliveries took place “a few months ago, when the Syrian rebels had to face both the armies of the dictator Bashar al-Assad and this terrorist group Islamic State.”
“We cannot leave the only Syrians who are preparing a democracy…without weapons,” he added.
Hollande did not specify which group or groups received the French weapons. It is clear he was speaking about forces opposed to both Assad and the Islamic State.
The Islamic State, however, together with a witch’s brew of extremist groups, like the al-Nusra front, are leading much of drive to take over territory in Syria.
Furthermore, the extremist groups have a history of capturing weaponry from the more moderate Syrian fighting forces.
In November there were reports that U.S.-backed fighters in Syria’s Jabal al-Zawiya surrendered to al-Nusra and swore allegiance to the Islamic extremist group allied with Al Qaeda. The International Business Times reported that after the al-Nusra victory, “Twitter accounts linked to the Islamist group claimed that U.S. weapons were among the stockpiles confiscated by the group.”
John Bolton: Terror Will Continue Until We Recognize We’re At War
John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, warns we may see Paris-like terror attacks or worse in the U.S. unless President Obama recognizes the West is “at war” with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, and acts accordingly.
Part of that war, he insists, is the need to put boots on the ground to “strangle” ISIS before it’s too late.
Bolton, a former undersecretary of state for arms control and international security under George W. Bush, made these comments on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s AM 970 The Answer.
“We have to have a conceptual breakthrough in the United States,” Bolton said. “President Obama still treats these terrorist incidents as a law-enforcement matter to be handled by arrests and due process, criminal trials in the United States.
“Obviously what happened in Paris was an attack on France, and it’s part of a larger picture,” Bolton continued. “But the president still has not woken up to this reality.”
“We’re going to continue to falter in our response until we decide this is not a law enforcement matter, this is war,” Bolton said. “We cannot lose sight of what’s at issue here: It’s a war and our response should be what a country does when it’s at war.”
Asked whether the U.S. military would need to deploy soldiers to fight ISIS, Bolton replied, “Inevitably, with respect to ISIS, it’s going to require American ground forces,” Bolton replied. “Trying to beef up the Iraqi army is wrong…. This is the army we ourselves trained and equipped, and it has failed.”
De Blasio And Radicals
Largely unreported in the news coverage of the recent race-related demonstrations is that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has a history of working with extremist activist groups to stir protests.
Further, de Blasio has a largely unreported history with the controversial Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.
ACORN’s renamed group, the New York Communities for Change, is one of the organizations helping to lead the protests over the death of Eric Garner, who was killed by police in July.