The US Department of State has admitted that the US-led coalition does not target the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham terrorist group in Syria because they have become too ‘intermingled’ with moderates and civilians.
Photo: c-span.org
The US Department of State said that the US does not target the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham [previously known as the Al-Nusra Front or the Jabhat al-Nusra] because they have become too ‘intermingled’ with moderates and civilians, and also accused Russia of causing the mess, which does not let Washington to separate the groups.
On Friday, giving an interview to the BBC, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov once again said that Washington never fulfilled its obligation to separate the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham and other groups of the so-called ‘moderate’ opposition, supported by the US. He also suggested that the US has been keeping terrorists in Syria, hoping that they will be useful for potentially deposition of the Bashar al-Assad’s government.
“They still, in spite of many repeated promises and commitments … are not able or not willing to do this and we have more and more reasons to believe that from the very beginning the plan was to spare al-Nusra and to keep it just in case for ‘Plan B’ … when it would be time to change the regime,” Lavrov said.
However, the US Department of State denied Lavrov’s statements and accused Moscow of making the “moderate” opposition to intermingle with terrorist fighters on the battlefield against the Syrian Army.
On Friday, spokesman for the US Department of State, Mark Toner, noted that Washington exerted every possible effort to influence and separate moderates from terrorists, and stressed that the ‘moderate’ opposition have been “driven more or less into the arms” and have no other choice, but to “turn to the Nusra, fight side by side.”
The official also admitted that the US-led coalition had not targeted the al-Nusra for several months due to the fact that its members had become “intermingled” with other groups and civilians.
“We did carry out strikes initially, back in 2014-2015, against Nusra. But absolutely, you’re correct in that, as they became intermingled and as they became intermingled in civilian areas, we’ve always sought to limit the possibility of civilian casualties in any of our airstrikes,” Toner said. “We wanted to work in a very strategic fashion about how to take out senior Nusra leadership like we’ve done pretty effectively against ISIL [the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group]. And that doesn’t include just laying waste to populated areas that may be under Nusra’s control,” he added.
While admitting the so called moderates are intermingled with nusra and still supplying them with weapons means the us understands they are arming and supporting nusra by continuing to hand over weapons to the “moderates”. That is basically admitting to the state sponsorship of terrorists. Now where is the “brave and honorable” us military to protect the us people from these domestic enemies like they took an oath to do? They’re probably too busy helping to enable these criminals to actually defend the us people (and the world) from these people.
The military attracts a lot of extremely politically naive people who very dearly want to believe that we are the good guys. Like anyone who deeply wants to believe something that is false, they avoid seeing many things right in front of them. I’ve tried having these conversations with Marines I knew. The cynical ones, who were already pretty much done with the system and the service, waiting for their chance to get out might listen, but the ones that still retained any idealism about any of it just could not conceptualise the idea that the US government could scheme like that. And that’s how it goes. The ones who stay I generally manage to convince themselves it’s not like that, and the ones who figure it out get out.
Also, the ideal of the military as an apolitical organisation that follows orders, along with general human nature and the desire for authority figures to make decisions for you leaves a lot of personnel trying not to ask the sticky questions, assuming that’s ‘not in their lane,’ (an attitude heartily and vocally encouraged from above), and hence that they should just focus on their speciality and let the foreign policy and intel people figure all that out.
There is a great deal of dissatisfaction amongst special operations people who have been involved training Syrian rebels, and deliberate sabotage of the training programs because of the impression that they are dealing with terrorists. I think there is a fair amount of such quiet disobedience going on. Unfortunately, because of the desire to believe in ‘Murica, most of the military and intelligence people who get that we sponsor terrorism try to shove responsibility onto the Democrats, as a way of avoiding their whole governing structure being complicit. Thus, they assure themselves that if we just vote differently, things will be better.
Only a really dump person would believe the statement US Department of State, so the USA needs a lot of dump people to believe them
It is a complete and total lie by the U.S. to say that they were targeting Al Nusra in 2014-15. I can find a nice glossy presentation on U.S. ISIS bombings http://www.defense.gov/News/Special-Reports/0814_Inherent-Resolve
But try finding that for Al Nusra or any Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, you will not. You will have to go back to 2012. We stopped bombing them completely in 2013 because the ‘moderates’ needed Al Nusra to fight Assad. While we conducted thousands of attacks on ISIS we conducted on the order of 50 or less strikes on non-ISIS groups.
US didn’t really bombed IS. you have to remember when the US claimed that they were bombing IS, IS expanded more then ever. and how about their oil smuggling infra strucutre. when the russians started to bomb, IS-turkey-israel oil smugling deal finished pretty quick. don;t you remember of putin saying, that IS oil operation was a size of an enterprise. actualy the russians destoryed huge numbers of oli trucks heading towards turkey but it was not done in a day, but almost over 2 weeks. there were indeed a huge number of oil trucks involved in that operation. how come IS was so free to do their illegal bussiness. did the US really bombed IS?
If they intermingle, they are one! Everyone can see that!
Hello, my name is the US State Department, I am a serial terrorist enabler
* from the rest of the room *
Hello State Department.
What difference does it make? Your proxies are getting mauled? Hours away from plan C and the admiral is in a civilian kit running for the limo with a wet bar?
Aleppo is a battle zone, you do not take humanitarian aide to people in a battle zone, you get the people out. The story that the MSM is telling is wrong on so many levels.
If i believe the MSM then the only people in East Aleppo are civilians (Nobel prize winning civilians) and the evil Russians are bombing them right. The truth is far from that, East Aleppo is controlled by Al Qaeda (Nusra Front and all the other flavours of Jihadists), remember the people who destroyed the twin towers, head chopping murderers?
it seems that there is no battle for Aleppo going on… in all the MSM coverage , all I hear…and particularly see…is poor innocent kids…
there do not seem to be any rebels …ergo…there is no battle going on… another strange thing is that occasionally we see harrowing pictures showing innocents and rivalling the pictures from Biafra….and yet the adults all seem well fed and well dressed and clean…like something out of Hollywood…