Syrian Rebel Chief Says His Fighters Are In Desperate Need Of Weapons, Not Food, Bandages

[Purveyor]

Source: Associated Press

Associated Press, Updated: Friday, March 1, 11:52 AM

BEIRUT — The chief of Syrian rebel forces said Friday that his fighters are in “desperate” need of weapons and ammunition rather than the food supplies and bandages that the U.S. now plans to provide.

The Obama administration on Thursday announced it was giving an additional $60 million in assistance to the country’s political opposition and said that it would, for the first time, provide non-lethal aid directly to rebels battling to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The move was announced by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at an international conference on Syria in Rome, and several European nations are expected in the coming days to take similar steps in working with the military wing of the opposition in order to ramp up pressure on Assad to step down and pave the way for a democratic transition.

A number of Syrian opposition figures and fighters on the ground, however, expressed disappointment with the limited assistance.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Activists+Bodies+most+them+shot+head+found+road+near+Syrian/8034623/story.html

[Eleanors38]

1. I read yesterday where the Saudis will make a major weapons dump to rebels.

[dipsydoodle]

2. Looks like they'd get used to being

disappointed.

[leftynyc]

3. Tough

We have no way of knowing whose hands those weapons are going to fall into. Let Europe deal with it.

[Paul E Ester]

4. The so called syrian "rebels" are terrorists.

Any aid or training will eventually be used to attack us or our interests. Just like the aid for the mujahedeen in Afghanistan brought about 911. Our support for islamist militants does not further democracy nor server our interests. Assuming we're serious about the war on terror, we should be destroying these Jihadist, not aiding them.

[RiverNoord]

6. What a load of crap. You're spouting propaganda, not offering informed

comment. There are a few Sunni jihadi groups fighting with the rebels. They are tough fighters and have been moving from one conflict to another since our invasion of Iraq. Most of the Syrian rebels put up with them somewhat uncomfortably, because they seem to be capable fighters but they do not represent what the rebels are actually seeking in a post-Bashar Syria. The jihadis are going to represent a problem for whoever emerges on top in the civil war, and if it's the rebels they'll probably get a timid thank you, then commit a few small scale atrocities against Syrian sensibilities and get rooted out.

The vastly greater number of rebels are Sunni Syrians fed up with being second-class citizens in an Allawite Shiite dominated society. Many are descendents or relations of people who were massacred years before by Bashar's father's regime. The whole situation is a minority-sect-ruled, majority-sect-repressed scenario, which has nothing to do with 'terrorism.' Oh - by the way, the British state openly declared that American revolutionaries were criminals and traitors - if the phrase 'terrorist' existed then, thy most certainly would have been that too...

[Dash87]

7. Oh yes, the heroic Syrian resistance.

They'll have a wide assortment of our weapons to kill US soldiers with later. Don't worry, there will be enough fundamentalist Islam in Syria to go around, courtesy of the West.

We've been the best friend a fundamentalist could have, and that doesn't seem to be changing any time soon.

[Paul E Ester]

8. The "rebels" are a murderous bunch of thugs

I believe we should hunt down and kill Jihadist not coddle them in some grand game. We have spent blood, treasure and liberty fighting these fanatics at home and abroad. I'm not willing to give them a pass because they are "tough fighters". The reason they are claimed to be so effective is because they have embraced death for themselves as martyrs and for everyone else in their Jihad.

[RiverNoord]

10. So... we should have applauded the Bashar al-Assad Baath

regime's use of its own bunch of murderous thugs when the street protesters were getting gunned down? 'Cuz that's literally what was happening. Just like in Libya, protesters who were not acting violently were rounded up, arrested, and some simply disappeared. Then the protests got bigger, so the regime started using both active military and militia in direct action against unarmed civilians. Then some of the unarmed civilians got themselves armed. Iran, Iraq, and Hezbollah sided with Assad - they're long-time allies. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, and others sided with the opposition - the really interesting one being Turkey, which had maintained positive relations with the neighboring Syrian regime for many years but was direct witness to some of the massacres underway and decided that it could not support the actions of the regime. The 'West,' of course, sided somewhat quietly with the opposition, since Syria had been a Soviet satellite regime during the cold war, was a current ally of Iran, and the animosity runs deep.

Once it was clear that there was going to be a real civil war, what you call 'jihadists' starting crossing into Syria to fight the regime. They are basically hard-core Sunnis who believe that Shia Islam is heresy - it's a religious war that's been fought for centuries. Think Protestant vs. Catholic over the hundreds of years since the Christian church underwent the Protestant schism. There was an absurd amount of blood spilled and hideous atrocities over that schism in Europe, even up to the late twentieth century (Ireland in particular). So - you've got 1) a regime that is mostly composed of members of a minority sect of Shia Islam 2) Adherents to Sunni Islam being violently repressed for many years by that regime, and 3) a handful of 'jihadis' - fundamentalist Sunnis who are mostly a bunch of semi-literate young people getting whipped up to fight by a very small number of fringe religious figures, and who have been taught that Shiites are just about the most evil things on the planet.

So - the situation is complicated. If Bashar al-Assad had actually given a shit about the overall territorial and political integrity of Syria, and managed a bit of foresight, he would have instituted a serious reform regime in response to the protests. Instead he did just like his father did in '82 and killed a lot of them. That's what al-Qaddafi did in Libya, and what Mubarak did in Egypt. Stupid and completely insulated from the real people of their nations, the lot of them.

I have no idea what anyone is doing to 'coddle' 'jihadis' who we should apparently be hunting down and killing, according to the prior poster. 9/11 was conducted by a very small group of bizarre cultish people, mostly from Saudi Arabia, who idolized Usama bin Laden and a number of his co-nut jobs. And the reason they turned against the US was because we established a military presence in Saudi Arabia, which contains Mecca and Medina, the two holiest sites in Islam. That was pretty goddamn stupid of our military and civilian leadership at the time - blowback from that was practically guaranteed. The modern 'jihadis' who are fighting in Syria developed as a result of the second Iraq war, when we brilliantly replaced a minority Sunni regime with a fundamentalist Shia regime (meaning naturally close to Iran and Syria), and the Shias in Baghdad and other contested cities conducted a vigorous campaign of ethnic cleansing to get rid of as many Sunnis as they could. For some strange reason, that really pissed off a lot of surviving Sunnis, and some from neighboring countries came over to side with their co-religionists. They had nothing whatsoever to do with the small 'al=Qaeda' cult that carried out the 9/11 attacks. I don't exactly know why we should 'hunt down and kill' them. How many enemies do you think your country can afford?

[Paul E Ester]

11. The arab spring narrative doesn't work in Syria...sorry

The pits of hell have opened up in Syria fueled by outside money and Jihadist of the most extreme nature. Shorty Guzman head of the Mexican Sinaloa cartel was heard saying "we thought we were savage killers, but we got nuttin on the rebels in Syria"

I'd link to the syrian rebel butchery but I am sure the post would get hidden and rightfully so because its some of the most depraved behavior ever caught on video. Find it yourself - liveleak has a Syria channel and search youtube for "FSA crimes".

It's easy to tell who the bad guys are, they are the ones with the beards yelling allah akbar as they blow up everything in their quest for martyrdom.

[Tempest]

5. Poor planning on their part doesn't constitute a crisis on ours

I hope we learned our lesson after arming the mujahideen, only to have those same weapons used against us when they turned into the Taliban.

[David__77]

9. Not one cent, one bandage, one bullet to the terrorists in Syria!

The administration will bear the responsibility for training another generation of terrorist radicals. Obama must withstand the pressure and continue to resist abetting terror.