US officials say that President Obama is close to shifting his stance on shipments of anti-aircraft weapons to Syrian rebels, amid growing Saudi pressure to allow such shipments.
Such shipments have been hugely controversial, as many of the rebel factions are overtly linked to al-Qaeda, and even those who are not have openly talked about using the missiles against civilian airliners.
Saudi Arabia has been hoping to send the missiles for years, and recently pushed the idea again as a way to blunt the Syrian Air Force impact on the seemingly endless civil war.
While the missiles could indeed change the complexion of the war, and force Syria to rely less on air power in fights against northern rebels, the destruction of commercial airline flights in the area is likely to be a major source of embarrassment for both the Saudis and the US.
So, even if Obama don’t want too but he have too, because Saudis tyrant saying that he should, or the Democratic Party will not be getting a penny by very rich “oligarch” influential people who have money doing business with Saudis tyrants regimes, the kind of democracy USG-Democratic Party or…, cooperates with.
Because giving small ) missiles that can shoot down planes to Al-Qaeda has always been such a great idea.
"Embarrassment?" the goal here is to blame Assad for any civilian plane shot down with missiles supplied by the rouge states, seeking a pretext for war.
This proposal is offered to shift the debate towards making a no-fly zone more politically acceptable. Clearly it would be insane to give radical sunnis access to man-portable ground-to-air missiles, and I doubt they are really considering it, but they can act like the only way the rebels can survive is either to give them missiles or implement a no-fly zone. The goal is to keep the war going as long as possible to bleed both Iran and the Sunni radicals. Also, its nice for the Saudis to continue exporting their dissidents to cause trouble elsewhere.
Remembers me on Afghanistan as the US did deliver Stinger rockets to the Taliban.
As they did shoot the Stinger rockets on Russian planes they were yelling:" Death to the Americans!".
Yes,one day they will fire back.And the US did send them the weapons.
It seems to me that stingers where being shot at us plans and helecopers in Afghanistan as late as 2004. A good thing they did not have a way of maintaining them. There is no way that these could get into the wrong hands a second time.
Last week there was a voice recording of a meeting of 4 high level government officials of Turkey (including secretary of state of Turkey) leaked. The recording was about Syrian rebels’ threats to Turkish borders and how Turkey should stop the situation even before it ascelades. This might be a move to counter arm the rebels.
Wow…the master piece if the “West” is to give
“MPADS” to radical – terroris groups in Syria!!
Yesterday , Charlie did it…..mmm..
NO WORRY we have lots of Charlie’s!