A new ISIS propaganda video is raising a lot of concerns for the US military operation inside Syria, as it includes substantial footage of the rebel New Syrian Army (NSA) being trained by US special operations forces, inside Syria, in the lead-up to an ISIS attack which forced a retreat.
The propaganda video itself centers on the US giving weapons to the NSA forces, and ISIS getting a hold of many of those weapons after routing the rebels in a failed attack on ISIS border crossing al-Bukamal. That’s old news though, and the footage of the training is a much more serious issue.
Where did the video come from, and how did ISIS get it? It’s unclear why the Pentagon would want to be recording their covert training operations inside Syria, particularly in the lead-up to an offensive. This raises the very real possibility that ISIS has so substantially infiltrated this “vetted” rebel force that they’re able to take substantial video of their operations.
That’s a potentially huge intelligence problem for US forces, but even the alternative, that the video was being recorded for some reason and ISIS just seized it in the course of routing the NSA isn’t much more comforting, as this still means ISIS was able to get substantial intelligence out of the video, and to make matters worse has a close up look at some of the US trainers, which puts them at severe risk.
The New Syrian Army operates out the area around the Jordan border, with a base near al-Tanf. Both US and British forces have been on the ground helping them, and the US has provided them substantial air support, though at this point the group has no territory beyond the Tanf border crossing, the least valuable crossing between Syria and Iraq.
Gotta love the MSM comments sections. When presented with irrefutable evidence of America training terrorists to overthrow the government of another country, one commenter chooses to respond: “And why is this relevant?”
Hows that for clueless?
There’s a third, more disturbing possibility here. That ISIS didn’t have to infiltrate or steal the video at all. That someone within the US-military/intelligence sphere gave that video to ISIS, likely before they became such a thorn in our side, in order to train them in their fight against Assad. After all, it’s now common knowledge to the well informed among us that the establishment of a radical Salafi state along the border of Syria and Iraq was at least at one time actively sought by the State Department. Paging Mr. Stone, Mr. Oliver Stone….