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The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2B on Soviet-Style Arms for Syrian Rebels

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51–60 of 206 posts

Re: The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2B on Soviet-Style Arms for Syrian Rebels

#51
post #20
post #4

The same documents confirm the CIA has been arming Al Qaeda in Syria. Scroll down to the last map[1] which shows CIA weapons went directly to Idlib province (northwest section in green) and the Golan border region (south). Both of these areas were and continue to be occupied by Al Qaeda. Idlib specifically is where genocidal cleansing of religious minorities was confirmed to be conducted by Al Qaeda "rebels" directly…

At this point, is anybody surprised by this? It's quite clear that when it comes to sponsoring groups in the Middle East, we just throw money/weapons at anyone, no matter who they are.

And Toyotas. Lots of Toyotas.

https://journal-neo.org/2015/10/09/the-mystery-of-isis-toyot...

Re: The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2B on Soviet-Style Arms for Syrian Rebels

#52
post #5

The US is literally sponsoring Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Syria to fuel the proxy war against Russia and Iran and to hinder their fight against ISIS and other jihadi groups. It's 1980s all over again and a 16th anniversary of 9/11. No lessons learned.

Did you miss the part where the U.S. has been giving tremendous support to the SDF/YPG in its fight against ISIS?

This literally started a couple of months ago under Trump, along with ending CIA's weapons running program. Here Trump truly deserves credit and outshines Nobel Peace laureate Obama. If he removes PKK from the US list of terrorist groups, that would be a 3 for 3 for him, although I'm not holding my breath.

Re: The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2B on Soviet-Style Arms for Syrian Rebels

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been saying this for years. "The CIA created ISIS. Not just funded, but created the situation where such organizations could come up." I constantly get criticized for this. "No, of course America isn't funding ISIS. We're fighting them." I then talk about The Bay of Pigs, the 1973 Coupe in Chile, Iranian Contras, The School of the Americas ... a criminal rap sheet that shows a pattern of sociopathhy by the US go…

Setting aside every other part of this discussion: I don't think a state actor can be accurately described as sociopathic. The expectations and interactions among nations are fundamentally different from those among people.

Can you make an argument for believing that?

Using psychological terms in a strictly behavioural fashion for groups/countries seems to me to not just be an analogy but capturing the essence of what is observable. Many of the concepts are similar e.g. identity, cooperation, aggression, lying, betrayal, self-preservation, fear etc.

You can defend this further and claim that even when examining an individual, you will see conflicting identities and traits that resembles the conflict in a group rather than a constant, simple, single identity. The underlying truth appears to not be not that a group does not have psychological behaviours its that a single simple human identity doesn't really exist and is always an emergent property of some collection of heterogeneous smaller parts identities/modes/processes etc.

Re: The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2B on Soviet-Style Arms for Syrian Rebels

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been saying this for years. "The CIA created ISIS. Not just funded, but created the situation where such organizations could come up." I constantly get criticized for this. "No, of course America isn't funding ISIS. We're fighting them." I then talk about The Bay of Pigs, the 1973 Coupe in Chile, Iranian Contras, The School of the Americas ... a criminal rap sheet that shows a pattern of sociopathhy by the US go…

Setting aside every other part of this discussion: I don't think a state actor can be accurately described as sociopathic. The expectations and interactions among nations are fundamentally different from those among people.

If you really look at human interactions they are exactly same as nation - level ones: constant fight for individual success with thinly cover of "moral values".

Re: The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2B on Soviet-Style Arms for Syrian Rebels

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been saying this for years. "The CIA created ISIS. Not just funded, but created the situation where such organizations could come up." I constantly get criticized for this. "No, of course America isn't funding ISIS. We're fighting them." I then talk about The Bay of Pigs, the 1973 Coupe in Chile, Iranian Contras, The School of the Americas ... a criminal rap sheet that shows a pattern of sociopathhy by the US go…

Setting aside every other part of this discussion: I don't think a state actor can be accurately described as sociopathic. The expectations and interactions among nations are fundamentally different from those among people.

Then why is it so many other countries don't act as we do? USSR under Joe did; that's hardly a ringing endorsement. Any Scandinavian country would be a good counter argument. Finland has withstood Soviet/Russian intimidation for more than seven decades without running around instigating insane, right-wing police states across the Globe.

Re: The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2B on Soviet-Style Arms for Syrian Rebels

#56
post #26
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, they are trying to support a secular and a relatively liberal (relative to an alternative) regime against ISIS and other jihadis, yes. To see an alternative, take a look at Libya after Gaddafi where there are literally slave markets in 2017.

"At this point" being the key phrase here. That wasn't their goal when they came in to back Syria: the goal was to clamp down on the uprising and its armed resistance. Of course, things are more complicated now. Oh definitely, Assad is liberal and secular, to the point where he operates countless secret torture prisons and has forcibly disappeared tens of thousands of his citizens. Use the term "lesser of evils" if y…

Citations on these secret prisons and dissapearing of people by the tens of thousands please?

Re: The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2B on Soviet-Style Arms for Syrian Rebels

#57
post #30
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone write an article about this??

Many have, you just won't find it on ABC, NBC, CBS, NYTimes, WaPo, etc...

Everything else has been downranked and censored by Google as fake news.

Re: The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2B on Soviet-Style Arms for Syrian Rebels

#58
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, is anybody surprised by this? It's quite clear that when it comes to sponsoring groups in the Middle East, we just throw money/weapons at anyone, no matter who they are.

I've been saying this for years. "The CIA created ISIS. Not just funded, but created the situation where such organizations could come up." I constantly get criticized for this. "No, of course America isn't funding ISIS. We're fighting them." I then talk about The Bay of Pigs, the 1973 Coupe in Chile, Iranian Contras, The School of the Americas ... a criminal rap sheet that shows a pattern of sociopathhy by the US go…

>we've been in 1984 long before I was born and long before my parents were born.

Can you expand on this? Thanks.

Re: The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2B on Soviet-Style Arms for Syrian Rebels

#59
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setting aside every other part of this discussion: I don't think a state actor can be accurately described as sociopathic. The expectations and interactions among nations are fundamentally different from those among people.

Nations are just groups of people, but I agree with you. I'm not generally in favour of applying terms like sociopathic to large groups.

Saying anything is "just a group" of its constituent parts is misleading and incorrect. Behaviors emerge at system levels that are not present among individual "parts."

Re: The Pentagon Is Spending Up To $2.2B on Soviet-Style Arms for Syrian Rebels

#60
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At this point, is anybody surprised by this? I mean it does seem weird that you have liberals cheerleading for funding a genocide, and completely losing their shit at Republicans for trying to stop it.

Does it really seem weird? I mean in the last 7 months we have literally watched the liberal left eating itself. Everest college. Berkeley. Antifa. BLM. Everyone disagreeing with them being silenced and called out as a bigot or racist. If I flip on the news, I seriously don't event know what country I am living in anymore. Up is down. Freedom is slavery. War is peace. I've heard that before... Oh god...

> Everyone disagreeing with them being silenced and called out as a bigot or racist.

Well the fact that antifa and all that stuff happened within a couple months of everyone donating to the ACLU is amusing on its own.

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