Bizarreness keeps making new highs for US policy in Syria, or as Zero Hedge calls it, “Full Metal Retard.” From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:
On Monday, the Pentagon proudly announced that it had “successfully” delivered 50 tons (yes, tons) of ammo to rebels fighting the Assad regime in Syria.
Before going any further, it’s important to note that the move to publicly deliver ammunition to the groups fighting the Russians set off alarm bells even among the most mainstream of media with CNN running the following headline as though the notion that the conflict is just another proxy war were somehow “news”: “Syria’s ‘proxy war’ rages in towns near Aleppo, Syria.”
So “all” it took was for Russia to invade and for the US to brag about handing “tons” of ammo to the very groups Moscow is fighting for the clueless public to come to the shocking realization that Washington is effectively at war with Moscow in Syria.
Obviously that’s not news, as it’s been clear to anyone who knows anything about geopolitics for years, but what is news is the extent to which the ammo paradrops mark a new low point for Washington in terms of countering Assad. As we put it on Monday:
The US has now thrown in the towel on the ill-fated (and that’s putting it lightly) strategy of training Syrian fighters and sending them into battle only to be captured and killed by other Syrian fighters who the US also trained.
The Pentagon’s effort to recruit 5,400 properly “vetted” anti-ISIS rebels by the end of the year ended in tears when word got out that only “four or five” of these fighters were actually still around. The rest are apparently either captured, killed, lost in the desert, or fighting for someone else.
Because this latest program was such a public embarrassment, the Pentagon had to come up with a new idea to assist Syria’s “freedom fighters” now that they are fleeing under bombardment by the Russian air force only to be cut down by Hezbollah.
The newest plan: helicopter ammo. No, really. The US has now resorted to dropping “tons” of ammo into the middle of nowhere and hoping the “right” people find it.
In funnier terms: The US just paradropped 50 tons of ammo on pallets into the most dangerous place on the face of the planet with no way of ensuring that it falls into the “right” hands.
The absurdity of that wasn’t lost on Putin, who offered the following critique on Tuesday: “U.S. air drops of weapons and ammunition intended for the Syrian Free Army, which is fighting Assad’s regime, could end up in the hands of Islamic State instead.”
And then on Wednesday, Turkey pitched a fit, with PM Ahmet Davutoglu proclaiming that “Turkey definitely can’t accept weapons aid to groups linked to PKK.”
Of course that declaration from Ankara seemed to come out of left field because after all, the US claimed the ammo and weapons were retrieved by the “Syrian Arab Coalition”, not the YPG.
Well, as it turns out, the “Syrian Arab Coalition” (which apparently didn’t even exist until last Friday) conveniently merged with the YPG over the weekend.
Consider the following from Reuters:
A Kurdish militia in northern Syria has joined forces with Arab rebels, and their new alliance has been promised fresh weapon supplies by the United States for an assault on Islamic State forces in Raqqa, a spokesman said on Monday.
The alliance calling itself the Democratic Forces of Syria includes the Kurdish YPG militia and Syrian Arab groups, some of which fought alongside it in a campaign that drove Islamic State from wide areas of northern Syria earlier this year.
The Arab groups in the new alliance are operating under the name “The Syrian Arab Coalition” – a grouping which U.S. officials have said would receive support under a new U.S. strategy aimed at fighting Islamic State in Syria.
Got it.
To continue reading: US Launches Ammo Paradrop For “Syrian Arabs”
