Insight - Obama and Syria: a trail of half-steps, mixed messages. Obama’s Pro-Assad Policy? Robert Dreyfuss thinks Obama’s recently revealed policy of supporting Iraqi security forces through the CIA so they can fight al-Qaeda affiliates there and cut off the flow of fighters pouring into Syria is nonsensical. “We’re backing the same guys in Syria that we’re fighting in Iraq,” he says. How is it that the administration is aiding the Syrian rebel fighters on one hand and fighting them on the other? It’s true that Obama has sent non-lethal aid to the rebels, despite the fact that the great bulk of the fighters who actually matter are jihadists.
It’s also true that Obama has made it a policy to coordinate the flow of weapons to these groups from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, and that the so-called “vetting process” meant to direct the aid only to moderate elements of the oppositions is, to put it mildly, ineffective (at least according to US intelligence officials). When I posed this paradox to former CIA intelligence officer and Antiwar.com columnist Phil Giraldi, he concurred. Wary US develops support for Syria rebels. Exclusive: Obama authorizes secret U.S. support for Syrian rebels. C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Rebels.