US Using Syrian Rebel Supply Lines As It Prepares To Send Arms

[Purveyor]

Source: REUTERS

WASHINGTON - The United States has quietly been testing the Syrian opposition's ability to deliver food rations, medical kits and money to rebel-held areas as Washington prepares to send arms to the rebel fighters.

US officials meet weekly in Turkey with Syrian opposition leaders to work out how best to keep supply lines open to rebel fighters and war-ravaged towns and districts.

One of the Syrian opposition's best-known female leaders, Suhair al-Atassi, attends the meetings as coordinator of the "non-lethal" aid that includes equipment for rebel fighters and local councils, as opposed to humanitarian aid for the displaced.

Supplies are handed to officers of the moderate Free Syrian Army (FSA) at clandestine locations that cannot be divulged for security reasons.

Read more: http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/US-using-Syrian-rebel-supply-lines-as-it-prepares-to-send-arms-321126

[msongs]

1. white house blood lust, the curse of recent american presidents nt

[Purveyor]

2. There is a big piece to this 'puzzle' I wish I could find because I don't understand it. Nope, not

a bit of it.

[Igel]

7. I have a belief.

Not testable, so it's not even much of a hypothesis.

Lots of statements pointing out when things are done it's the "first time in history" or "making history." Most of the time it's trivial history.

In the 2008 campaign there was "no appeal" to race. The area I lived in had a very large African-American majority, and we got robocalls asking us to help "make history" by electing then-Senator Obama as president. I always wondered if the "history" being made was just electing a president--which is always history, after all. Or was it electing the first president from Hawaii. Or what? It must have been thought to be really important to the people in those areas, whatever it was, because the main thrust of the sales pitch was to help Senator Obama "make history." Policies, not such a big deal.

Then we heard that the "arc of history" does such-and-such.

In Libya, we needed to be "on the right side of history."

I think that in Syria we need to be "on the right side of history" and we have to set the course of "history" and we have to worry about legacy and fix the "bad history" that we have in the area.

I think it also helps that we see the "rebels"--the good ones, at least--as like us. They're part of "our" group. And, as in Egypt, when there are things that the "liberals like us" do--engage in violence, bail on the electoral process, encourage the Army to stage a coup--we rethink not our group solidarity but their actions. So it's not a coup. The violence was justified. Of course there was no reason to support the MB.

Some people see things through a lens firmly fixed in the past. Some try see things through a lens firmly fixed in the future. Me, when I'm having my temporal fits, tend to be existentialist and live too much in the present.

[another_liberal]

3. Is a "Moderate" rebel someone who only rebels part of the time?

Secret, undisclosed hand off points and unidentified recipients, that's wonderful. Most of our aid is likely going to be resold, and to whom we can only guess. Seriously, though, this sounds like a damn good way to lose control of everything we send to Syria. Who knows which group, or which side, this aid will end up going to.

[daleo]

4. I am not sure if the military industrial complex cares who gets the arms

Just as long as they are made and sold, and a few people get rich doing it.

[dipsydoodle]

5. That moderates are called al Sh Boom

They believe that life could be a dream

[Alamuti Lotus]

6. the "moderates" are determined to be "people we can do business with"

those "extremists", among other entries in the black book of their deeds, "think that's bonk". That is the sole and prevailing determining factor in the distinction, all other facts are a distraction from this formula.