Marc Thiessen, “The new Middle East coverup: Biden caught in Syria debate falsehood”:
First there was the Libya coverup. Now, we have the Syria coverup.
In last week’s vice presidential debate, Joe Biden asserted that the United States was working to isolate al-Qaeda in Syria by ensuring that aid was directed to moderate elements of the Syrian opposition. “We are working hand and glove with the Turks, with the Jordanians, with the Saudis, and with all the people in the region attempting to identify the people who deserve the help so that when Assad goes — and he will go — there will be a legitimate government that follows on, not an al-Qaeda-sponsored government that follows on,” Biden declared.
Paul Ryan immediately challenged Biden’s claim, saying that the administration’s inaction has allowed al-Qaeda to get a foothold in Syria. “The longer this has gone on, the more people, groups like al-Qaeda are going in,” Ryan said, adding, “We could have more easily identified the Free Syrian Army, the freedom fighters, working with our allies, the Turks, the Qataris, the Saudis, had we had a better plan in place.”
Biden denied it, declaring: “We are in the process now — and have been for months — in making sure that help, humanitarian aid, as well as other aid and training is getting to those forces that we believe, the Turks believe, the Jordanians believe, the Saudis believe are the free forces inside of Syria. That is underway.”
Well, according to a report in this morning’s New York Times, Biden’s statement was not true.
“Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster, according to American officials and Middle Eastern diplomats,” the Times reports.
The paper quotes one U.S. official as saying, “The opposition groups that are receiving the most of the lethal aid are exactly the ones we don’t want to have it,” adding that “officials, voicing frustration, say there is no central clearinghouse for the shipments, and no effective way of vetting the groups that ultimately receive them.”
In other words, what Biden said was false. Worse yet, Biden knew his statement was untrue when he said it. According to the Times, “President Obama and other senior officials are aware [of this conclusion] from classified assessments of the Syrian conflict that has now claimed more than 25,000 lives,” adding the intelligence assessments “casts into doubt whether the White House’s strategy of minimal and indirect intervention in the Syrian conflict is accomplishing its intended purpose of helping a democratic-minded opposition topple an oppressive government, or is instead sowing the seeds of future insurgencies hostile to the United States.”
If this is the assessment of our intelligence community, why did Biden say the exact opposite in the debate last week? When Biden was asked during the debate why requests for additional security in Libya were denied, he pleaded ignorance and blamed the State Department, declaring: “We weren’t told they wanted more security there.” But in the case of Syria, the Times reports, the President and his national security team were told that the aid was going to “hard-line Islamic jihadists.” Yet Biden plainly asserted aid was going to “people who deserve the help” and “free forces inside Syria” and not jihadists. It is simply implausible that, if President Obama and his top national security advisers were aware of the intelligence assessments, Biden was not.
The revelation that the Obama administration has presided over the development of an arms pipeline to al-Qaeda in Syria — and Biden’s apparently deliberate untruth about it in last week’s debate — is the latest Obama foreign policy coverup. With foreign policy on the agenda in tomorrow’s presidential debate, Mitt Romney has a golden opportunity to challenge the president on his administration’s latest national security scandal.
[…]
Romney needs to ask the president tomorrow night: How is it that most of the aid in Syria is going to al-Qaeda and its allies? Why did your administration knowingly mislead the American people about this? And when are you going to stop subcontracting our responsibilities to others and start making sure aid and training get to those who share this nation’s values?
With any luck, Obama will slip up and let us know from his own mouth what we already know from his Administration’s foreign policy: the idea is to destabilize the middle east and level the playing field of power in the region, even (and especially) if that means a weakened US and a more vulnerable Israel. After all, Obama believes himself a new kind of Lawrence of Arabia, albeit one who will undo the colonialism of the past and return the region to its rightful peoples — who will be lead by 7th-century iron-fisted theocrats whose political ideology, married to its religion, is to destroy the West and its interests.
Which, with any luck, will keep us busy and on guard such that we can’t go poking into the affairs of other nations — and having lost that hyperpower status, will be more amenable to transnational coalitions to aid in keep peace in the region through economic “fairness”.
It’s a dangerous and naive pipe dream, but then, Obama’s entire worldview, and the tactics and strategies used to will it into being, is built on the needy radicalism of spoiled Americans steeped in Marxist fantasies. It is faculty lounge radical chic, innocuous and demonstrably simplistic in its understanding of global dynamics until such time as it is smuggled into the White House and into our State Department and begins to take its turn at the chess board.
At which time it arrogance refuses to let is see just how out of its depth it is — believing still that it is calling the shots and moving the pieces, even as it becomes increasingly clear that much of the world has recognized its weakness and confusion and is rushing to take advantage of every last misstep the smart set played, not realizing it was never the smart set in this particular game.
The marriage of convenience between transnational progressivism and militant Islamism our brilliant leftist academics and statesman believed they could control is turning into an abusive relationship. And I don’t think it takes much teasing out of details to see just who keeps getting bitch slapped.
Soledad O’Brien demands lawyerly precision along with the plate of shit she’s decided to eat: Rudy has his way.
Methinks there are limits to how much vulnerability the Israelis are prepared to take on. Which is probably a big factor in the Obamarrhoids’ decision to treat them as enemies.
Geoffb helpfully pointed me to two other potential Syrian regime opposition arming possibilities: captured Chem and Bio warfare agents. Y’know, bugger all.
We are working hand and glove
Well, THERE’s your problem: it’s hand IN glove.
It is faculty-lounge radical chic, innocuous and demonstrably simplistic in its understand of global dynamics until such time as it is smuggled into the White House and into our State Department and begins to take its turn at the chess board.
Keeper.
Sweet dreams.
Which is why we simply turn the entire region to glass and be done with it.
Stop giving these douchebags money and weapons. Seriously, let them kill each other. I don’t care if it destabilizes the Middle East. We can help Israel protect itself (and maybe Iraq- I think a majority of Iraqis would like to be democratic and we’ve made a sizable investment in the country) but other than that, they can eat each other for all I care. Name one staunch ally in the Middle East, that we don’t suspect is completely sticking a knife in our backs. They want us out of the Middle East, lets leave it.
And how could Hussein give chemical and bio weapons to Syria, when we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, for an absolute fact, that Hussein, never, ever, never ever ever ever, had either chemical or biological weapons? I know this because Joe Wilson and the press told me so.
As did civilian airliners.
One thing I think we must do — whether we leave or don’t leave, glass the joint or don’t glass the joint — is this: we must stop calling enemy formation’s attacks on our own forces terrorism. It’s war people, and in war one enemy attacks its antagonists.
Terrorism is a useful term when referring to tactically impotent attacks on civilian populations and the like for politically strategic advantage — newspaper coverage: seizing Olympians in their Olympic villages, hostage takings in airliners, flying planes out of the blue into buildings.
But jihadists attacking fixed positions of our own warriorly formations with well armed and organized fighting forces? Warfare by armies. Call ’em jihadists or Islamist armies. Stop calling ’em terrorists. The elision is too crucial.
We can’t just split, Matt.
The Russians have a naval base russian naval base in Syria.
russian naval base[…] tip to Jeff Goldstein, who concludes: The marriage of convenience between transnational progressivism and militant […]
Stop giving these douchebags money and weapons.
Better yet — give all of them weapons. Just imagine if all the warlords armed by the UN and the Euros were suddenly faced with equal firepower in the hands of their rivals. Things would get real polite, or real ugly. Either way, I’ll count it a win for us.
Squid, I believe that was Madeliene Halfbright’s solution with nuclear weapons.
For the fairness!
I’m with Squid. I think we should be dropping cases of AK-47s and ammo into every little town, and every big city, where the barbarians live. Then, they can kill each other off in their “holy war.”
I’m not against them sending each other home to Allah. They seem to have plenty of fire power without us giving them an assist, is all I’m saying.
I draw the line on their encroaching on the West. They can fuck off right back to the ME with their Sharia law. And for all those altruists who think we can all get along, I suggest they be subjected to repeated viewings of Danny Pearl’s head being sawn off. Khalid Sheikh Mohammmed looks pretty fat and sassy at his trial today while his attorney whines about him being water-boarded. Someone should fire up a chain saw behind him and watch him dance.
I honestly believe that if every Neighborhood Watch over there were effectively a rifle platoon, we’d see a lot less nonsense altogether. Any asshole tries to throw acid on somebody’s niece is liable to meet with some of that “social justice” the Proggies are always bleating about. Any ‘benevolent dictator’ types come through promising to protect us from the riff-raff could be told to fuck right off.
Call me naive, but I still think most of those guys just want to raise their families and be left alone.
Trick Question. The Biden Pop has no center.
Quite probably true but they will have to have a reformation first and arms would help in that too.
Their religion is an all encompassing system of rule by the divine right of kings ramped up past 11 along with countenanced/encouraged enslavement of women, children and all not of the faith, with the criminal mob rule that once you’re in, you and all your descendents are in forever. Only way out is death.
Something has to give way for there to be peace with and within the ROP.
” with the criminal mob rule that once you’re in”
Are You In?
Which is why we simply turn the entire region to glass and be done with it.
<litella>What’s all this I’ve been hearing about “Glass Warfare”…?</litella>