{"id":53381,"date":"2016-03-30T14:22:06","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T21:22:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=53381"},"modified":"2016-03-30T14:22:16","modified_gmt":"2016-03-30T21:22:16","slug":"surprise-syrian-showdown-pentagon-backed-rebels-fighting-cia-backed-rebels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/03\/30\/surprise-syrian-showdown-pentagon-backed-rebels-fighting-cia-backed-rebels\/","title":{"rendered":"Surprise Syrian showdown: ‘Pentagon-backed rebels fighting CIA-backed rebels’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy RT<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n
American soldiers never used to shoot at our CIA agents, and vice-versa, but that\u2019s what\u2019s reportedly happening in the northern part of Syria, former CIA officer Ray McGovern told RT from Washington, DC.<\/div>\n
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In February, the CIA-armed group \u2018Fursan al Haq\u2019, or Knights of Righteousness, were apparently forced out of their positions by the so-called \u2018Syrian Democratic Forces\u2019, backed by the Pentagon.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0report<\/a> – put out by a US Veterans group – comes as President Obama this month authorized a new Pentagon plan to train and arm Syrian anti-government fighters.<\/p>\n

RT: <\/strong>How much control do the US military and intelligence have over the groups they are funding on the ground?<\/em><\/p>\n

Ray McGovern:<\/strong> Well, let\u2019s start with the good news. The good news is that because of Russian intervention and President Obama\u2019s sensible reaction to it, namely, no longer pressing for priority for removing Assad and also allowing Iranians to participate in negotiations, the ceasefire – or what we call the \u2018cessation of hostilities\u2019 – is holding. Now, the embarrassing part of all is that when President Putin and President Obama told their respective foreign ministers to de-conflict things, make sure their planes don\u2019t run into each other, that has moved forward to the point with this active military cooperation in Syria.<\/p>\n

Now, unfortunately the same is not true of the various factions within the US government: the CIA, on the one hand, and the Department of Defense, on the other. They don\u2019t seem able to de-conflict their strategies. And the bottom line here of course is there\u2019s no one in control. Susan Rice, National Security Adviser, she is going to tell the Special Operation folks and the Air Force and the CIA what to do? It is almost laughable, if it weren\u2019t so serious\u2026 We have different objectives. First of all, the moderate rebels were going to remove Assad and then they got instructions: ‘No, no, don\u2019t remove Assad. We are going to go after ISIS.’<\/em> No one knows what to think. And besides that the Pentagon has been thoroughly embarrassed by investing half a billion dollars into fielding four or five people still in the fight. So, the solution is to work with the Russians, to make sure that they de-conflict not only Russian and US objectives and actions, but that the Russians might even help us to de-conflict the obvious shooting that is going on between CIA-supported rebels and Department of Defense-supported rebels. It is really quite an embarrassment\u2026<\/p>\n

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Read more<\/div>\n

\"\u00a9Hillary Clinton, Google and Al Jazeera walk into Syrian Civil War: Western media buries story<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

RT: <\/strong>Could this be part of the rivalry within the enormous US war machine with both departments, the CIA and Pentagon, wanting to defeat each other?<\/em><\/p>\n

RG:<\/strong> Yes, it could. These things happen. If there is no strong leadership from the top, and I mean the White House here, that\u2019s why I referred to Susan Rice, the National Security Adviser. If she is having the same problems with the Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter as her predecessor Condoleezza Rice had with Donald Rumsfeld then the National Security Adviser is not doing her job. And the President is aloof. And so you get the Department of Defense and the CIA both running their little operations and, quite frankly, I doubt whether the CIA is telling the Pentagon all the things that it is doing in Syria. It is a secret, after all.<\/p>\n

RT: <\/strong>How do both the CIA and the Pentagon choose the groups to support?<\/em><\/p>\n

RG:<\/strong> It has been sort of a helter-skelter choosing process, reminiscent of the people we chose to go into Iraq and set up a government more amenable to our influence. The moderate rebels that we are allegedly supporting \u2013 you know it is really bizarre because the President of the US two years ago said: ‘There are no moderate rebels. This is a fantasy’<\/em>. Well, if it is a fantasy and there are no moderate rebels, whom are we supporting there with millions and millions of dollars? These things have a momentum of their own. And once you have a covert action program with 500 million dollars like the Defense had, you\u2019ve got all this money and people say: ‘Let\u2019s find some moderate rebels because we have all this money.’<\/em><\/p>\n

So it is really a totally inept performance with no central control on the part of the White House, and so you would expect this kind of now it has reached ludicrous proportions. Our soldiers never used to shoot at our CIA agents, and vice-versa, and that\u2019s what\u2019s going on apparently in the northern part of Syria.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy RT American soldiers never used to shoot at our CIA agents, and vice-versa, but that\u2019s what\u2019s reportedly happening in the northern part of Syria, former CIA officer Ray McGovern told RT from Washington, DC. In February, the CIA-armed group \u2018Fursan al Haq\u2019, or Knights of Righteousness, were apparently forced out of their positions by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}