McCain told Sputnik that he stays in contact with members of al Qaeda targeted by Russian airstrikes, staying at Cindy’s Malibu beach house
According to the Russian Defense Ministry, all the airstrikes against the Islamic State terrorist group were launched with advance air surveillance and careful verification of data provided by the Syrian military.
McCain asserted, however, that “the majority of the Russian attacks are against the Free Syrian Army, the moderates.” Asked what sources he bases his conclusions on, McCain stated, “There is open source information, of course. It has been reported widely in every major newspaper in America.”
[ Editor’s Note: So now we have the chairman for the Senate Foreign Relations committee telling us that newspapers are Intelligence sources, when we know that he knows that they are widely used for planting bogus stories, and even entire bogus campaigns by at least two Intelligence agencies that we could name, but don’t have to… Jim W. Dean ]
On September 30, Russia commenced precision airstrikes against Islamic State (ISIL) targets in Syria at the request from Syrian President Bashar Assad. Since then, Russia has targeted dozens of ISIL positions, including command centers, headquarters, multiple-launch rocket systems, T-55 tanks, and other military equipment.
On September 16, US Central Command Commander, Gen. Lloyd Austin, stunned the Senate Armed Services Committee by admitting that out of the first group of trained fighters sent to Syria only four or five remained active. McCain also claims that US-trained Syrian moderate rebels are losing confidence in their ability to fight as a result of a lack of US support.
“Their morale is at an all-time low because Americans trained them, equipped them, sent them into fight and then won’t protect them against being killed,” McCain said on Tuesday.
McCain was an early supporter of the CIA program to arm and train Syrian moderates to fight President Assad in the early stages of the Syrian civil war. The Senator famously posed for a picture with members of the US-backed Syrian opposition in 2013. Some news outlets later alleged the Syrians went on to join the Islamic State.
Earlier on Thursday, Western media reported that Russian airstrikes allegedly hit US-trained Syrian rebels.
It seems real scary, eh? Those “bad” Russians are doing no good in Syria, harming “good” Syrian militants trained by the CIA. Except a few weeks ago the US Department of Defense (DoD) announced that they had no idea where “their” rebels were.
Furthermore, there were fears that those missing rebels could have joined the al-Nusra terrorist group, the al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria. Oops, turns out the Pentagon trained al-Qaeda fighters in Syria. Good job, America.
Then, even more amusing things happened. US Commander of Central Command (CENTCOM) Gen. Lloyd Austin said that out of all US-trained Syrian rebels only nine individuals were fighting ISIL. Back in July, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter reported that the United States had successfully trained 60 Syrian fighters.
If only nine out of these US-trained rebels are actually fighting ISIL, while the rest are “missing” somewhere in the Syrian desert, and even worse have joined al-Nusra or perhaps other jihadist groups, including ISIL, then the US government is doing an awful and counterproductive job, to say the least.
And just when Russia started the anti-ISIL airstrike campaign, Western media reported that all those US-trained rebels, who were previously missing, suddenly appeared out of the desert and said that their entire training grounds were hit and commanders killed. Sounds absurd, right? Especially considering that not long ago Gen. Austin himself said there were only nine US-trained rebels out there in the whole of Syria.
Now comes the best part — later today the Pentagon confirmed that Russian planes didn’t hit any Syrian opposition forces. Of course Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the same thing, stating that the earlier media claims were false, but when did Western media listen to him?
Syria is a mess. Everyone knows this much is true. It seems like the US government hasn’t the slightest idea of what’s really going on in Syria: where the CIA-trained rebels are and to which jihadist group “their” rebels ended up joining and even what is Russia doing in Syria. Bombing US-backed rebels, as Senator McCain claimed or not bombing them, according to the official Pentagon report.
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