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House Intelligence Committee Chairman: “Even Moderate Syrian Rebels are Partnered with Jihadists”

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On October 17, 2012 @ 8:46 pm In The Point | 6 Comments

Or to put it another way, there are no moderate Syrian rebels. The moderate Syrian rebels are still working hand in glove with Al Qaeda. The only difference that they’ve stopped lying about it, now that they don’t see NATO stepping in to act as their air force while Qatar, Turkey and the Saudis act as their arms dealers.

Syrian rebels are through waiting for substantial arms from western nations and Arab countries and are instead increasingly cutting their own deals to get weapons from extremists, including al Qaeda-like groups, a senior U.S. lawmaker told CNN.

“Even rebels we’ve identified as somebody we could work with have partnered with jihadists, because they have their own sources of money and weapons,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said in an interview.

The CNN article wastes 50 percent of its text on explaining that the Syrian rebels have only turned to Al Qaeda because we didn’t come through with everything they wanted right away. Finding excuses for Muslims is now the number one specialty of the media and they’re good at it.

But let’s step back a bit and look at the bill of goods we were being sold about the moderate, secular and patriotic Syrian rebels. Suppose there were actually such creatures, would they link up with Salafists whose goal is to turn Syria into a place that makes Saudi Arabia look moderate?

Here’s what Syria is. It’s a religious civil war with Islamist Shiite militias from Iraq and Lebanon, including Hezbollah on one side, and Islamist Sunni militias, including Al Qaeda, on the other.

Behind the militias are Islamist Sunni and Shiite tyrannies, including Iran and Qatar, supplying weapons, training and aid to the local factions, including Sunni members of the military who have joined the Sunni Islamists and the government supporters, primarily Alawite Shiites, and a sprinkling of Druze and other religious minorities who would be in big trouble if the Brave Syrian People of Al Qaeda win. And yes that includes Christians who are being murdered by the Salafist allies of the Brave Syrian People (TM) if not the Brave Syrian People themselves.

The good news is here is that the enemy has done us a favor, and as is so often the case in the region, they made sure not to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. The more stories about Al Qaeda’s prominent role in the Syrian civil war spill out into the mainstream media, the more impossible it will become to intervene on their behalf.

CNN is trying to spin the Al-Qaedaization of the Syrian Civil War as our fault because we didn’t step in quickly enough. You’ll find plenty of pundits, including some on our side of the aisle trying to make that frog march. Don’t believe it. The only change that has happened is that the Free Syrian Army has stopped hiding its alignment with Al Nusra


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