Shady PR operatives,pro-Israel ties,anti-Castro money:Inside the Syrian opposition’s DC spin machine

[JohnyCanuck]

I'm so shocked, Syrian opposition has ties to the neocons who have a track record of embroiling the USA and its NATO hanger-ons in illegal, expensive and debilitating war.

During the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Syria on September 3, Secretary of State John Kerry and Senator John McCain both cited a Wall Street Journal editorial by Elizabeth O’Bagy to support their assessment of the Syrian rebels as predominately “moderate,” and potentially Western-friendly.

“She works with the Institute of War,” Kerry said of O’Bagy. “She’s fluent in Arabic and spent an enormous amount of time studying the opposition and studying Syria. She just published this the other day. Very interesting [Wall Street Journal] article, which I commend to you.”

snip

What Kerry and McCain neglected to mention was that O’Bagy had been recently hired as the political director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF), a little known outfit that functions as a lobbying arm of the Syrian opposition in Washington.

snip
“Logrolling for war”

The Institute for the Study of War’s (ISW) board of directors is led by William Kristol. Kimberly Kagan, the group’s president, was on General Stanley McChrystal’s strategic review team in 2009, advocating for a dramatic expansion of the US presence in Afghanistan. Her husband is Frederick Kagan, the AEI fellow who is the uncle of fellow neocon Robert Kagan.

http://mondoweiss.net/2013/09/shady-pr-operatives-pro-israel-ties-anti-castro-money-inside-the-syrian-oppositions-dc-spin-machine.html

[JohnyCanuck]

1. kick /nt