The “Osama bin Laden Brigade” of the Free Syria Army

http://www.infowars.com/obama-backed-fsa-rebels-name-their-brigade-osama-bin-laden/ video at link

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
May 20, 2013

Underlining once again how the White House is openly seeking to arm terrorists in Syria, video has emerged of one of the FSA rebel groups referring to their unit as the “Osama Bin Laden” brigade.

The clip shows one of the militants proclaim how he is part of “The Osama bin Laden brigade of the Souqour Dimashq (Hawks of Damascus) Battalion…..Allahu Akbar!” as the insurgents prepare to attack a Syrian Army checkpoint.

“Western countries have been claiming that the FSA is comprised of somewhat “secular” people and that jihadists have only joined the fight but they are not part of the FSA. Well, you cannot get more al-Qaeda’ish than calling a brigade “Osama bin Laden,” states the description accompanying the video.

Indeed, while the media narrative has attempted to frame the presence of Al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria under the banner of Jabhat Al-Nusra as a separate entity to FSA fighters, whom the White House is now preparing to arm with heavy weaponry, 29 FSA groups pledged allegiance to Al-Nusra, which was responsible for killing U.S. troops in Iraq, immediately after the group was declared a terrorist organization by the State Department back in December.

A May 8 London Guardian report noted how Jabhat al-Nusra is “emerging as the best-equipped, financed and motivated force fighting Bashar al-Assad’s regime,” and how droves of FSA fighters are now joining its ranks.

This is by no means the first time western-backed FSA rebels have proudly proclaimed their affinity with Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.

As we reported earlier this year, video footage emerged showing Syrian rebels singing songs in praise of Osama Bin Laden while celebrating the “sweet memory” of the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11.

“They (Twin Towers) have gone with the blink of an eye, oh how sweet is the memory,” the crowd sings in Arabic. “Our leader Osama Bin Laden, America’s worst nightmare,” the song continues as the crowd cheers, “If they call me a terrorist I will consider it an honor, our terror is blessed, a divine call, Allah is our goal we strive to reach him.”

FSA fighters have also displayed the black Al-Qaeda flag on innumerable occasions, including recently during a series of grisly public executions.

A Syrian rebel quoted by McClatchy Newspapers last year was overheard to remark, “When we finish with Assad, we will fight the U.S.!” Other militants have appeared in You Tube videos speaking of their desire to see the Al-Qaeda flag fly over the White House and impose Sharia law once the rebels are victorious across the region.

Rebels have also been caught on camera burning U.S. flags and chanting anti-American slogans.

The fact that Syrian opposition fighters are increasingly being exposed as sectarian jihadists loyal to Al-Qaeda, in addition to their innumerable atrocities, has derailed the now flimsy narrative that the FSA is comprised of freedom fighters who merely want to topple the dictatorship of Bashar Al-Assad to restore liberty in Syria.

With the Syrian Army winning major battles and reclaiming key areas of the country, the White House and other NATO powers are rapidly running out of time in their bid to oversee a repeat of what happened in Libya, where Al-Qaeda insurgents were also armed as part of the effort to depose Colonel Gaddafi, a process that led to the country being overtaken by brutal warlords and terrorist gangs who later took part in the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi last September.

Despite the fact that FSA rebels are being led and taught how to build bombs by Al-Qaeda militants, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs panel Rep. Eliot Engel has introduced legislation urging the Obama administration to send $150 million in “lethal and non-lethal security assistance” to the insurgents. Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said that the Obama administration was “rethinking” its opposition to arming the rebels.

However, as the New York Times reported, the CIA has already been involved in “a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad” since early 2012.

Watch a video clip of western-backed rebels singing the praises of Osama bin Laden while glorifying the 9/11 attacks below.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.

NY Times Finally Admits: U.S./CIA Arming Terrorists in Syria

By Tony Cartalucci

Global Research, June 22, 2012

As West berates Syria for “killing civilians” Western weapons flow into terrorist hands from NATO.  The New York Times in their article, “C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition,” confirms what many have already long known – that the West, led by the US and its Gulf State proxies, have been arming terrorists, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, while berating the Syrian government for “violating” a UN mandated ceasefire and for “failing to protect” its population. The Muslim Brotherhood has been combated by nations across the Arab World to stem the tide of their sectarian extremism, violence, and their targeted erosion of secular nation-states. Ironically, the US which has claimed to have been fighting the forces of sectarian extremism and “terrorism” for over a decade now, have been revealed as the primary enabler of the most violent and extreme terrorist organizations in the world. These include, in addition to the Muslim Brotherhood, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) in Libya, Baluch terrorists in Pakistan, and the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) currently based in Iraq and being used as proxies against Iran.   Video: Professor Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research gives perhaps the most comprehensive back-story on Syria’s conflict to-date.  VIDEO: US-NATO “Humanitarian Intervention” in Syria: Towards a Regional War? Latest report now available on GRTV - by Michel Chossudovsky, Nile Bowie – 2012-06-08 …. The New York Times claims “the C.I.A. officers have been in southern Turkey for several weeks, in part to help keep weapons out of the hands of fighters allied with Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, one senior American official said,” a unsubstantiated claim that was similarly made in Libya before Al Qaeda flags were run up poles in Benghazi by rebels flush with NATO cash and arms used to collapse the government of Muammar Qaddafi. In fact, it is confirmed that Libyan LIFG rebels, led by Al Qaeda commander Abdul Hakim Belhaj, have now made their way by the hundreds to Syria (and here). Despite months of the US claiming the “international community” sought to end the violence and protect the population of Syria, the New York Times now admits that the US is engaged in supporting a “military campaign” against the Syrian government aimed at increasing “pressure” on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Efforts to impose an arms embargo on Syria is now revealed to be one-sided, aimed at giving rebels an advantage in the prolonged bloodbath with the intent on tipping the balance in favor of Western proxy-forces – not end the violence as soon as possible as claimed by the UN, and in particular, Kofi Annan. The Times also reported that Turkey has been directly delivering weapons to terrorists operating in Syria – Turkey being a NATO member and implicating NATO as now being directly involved in perpetuating bloodshed in the Middle Eastern nation. For months, Turkey has been allowing terrorists to use its border region as a refuge from which to stage attacks against Syria. Despite this, however, the so-called “Free Syrian Army,” according to the New York Times, consists of only 100 or so small formations made up of  “a handful of fighters to a couple of hundred combatants,” betraying the narrative that the Syrian government faces a large popular uprising, and revealing that the “Free Syrian Army” is in fact a small collection of mercenaries, foreign fighters, and sectarian extremists, armed, funded, and directed by foreign interests solely to wreak havoc within Syria. It should be noted that these terrorist proxies were organized as early as 2007 by the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, specifically to enact regime change and transform Syria into a Western client regime.  As the West’s propaganda campaign imploded after a torrent of unsubstantiated claims of “massacres” and “atrocities,” all unverified, some in fact being revealed as the work of the West’s sectarian proxies themselves,  it appears that sidelining Syria in headlines while pursuing a clandestine proxy war is now the tactic of choice for the time being. For the United States to claim Syria has “failed” to protect it population, while simultaneously fueling the  armed conflict it claims it is seeking to end, is not only hypocrisy of the highest order, but a crime against world peace – punishable under the Nuremberg precedent.

From Washington this looks like Syria’s ‘Benghazi moment’. But not from here

Look east and what does Bashar see? Iran standing with him and Iraq refusing to impose sanctions

Robert Fisk

The Independent, UK

Tuesday 07 February 2012

President Bashar al-Assad is not about to go. Not yet. Not, maybe, for quite a long time. Newspapers in the Middle East are filled with stories about whether or not this is Assad’s “Benghazi moment” – these reports are almost invariably written from Washington or London or Paris – but few in the region understand how we Westerners can get it so wrong.

The old saw has to be repeated and repeated: Egypt was not Tunisia; Bahrain was not Egypt; Yemen was not Bahrain; Libya was not Yemen. And Syria is very definitely not Libya.

It’s not difficult to see how the opposite plays in the West. The barrage of horrifying Facebook images from Homs, and statements from the “Free Syrian Army”, and the huffing of La Clinton and the amazement that Russia can be so blind to the suffering of Syrians – as if America was anything but blind to the suffering of Palestinians when, say, more than 1,300 were killed in Israel’s onslaught on Gaza – doesn’t gel with reality on the ground. Why should the Russians care about Homs? Did they care about the dead of Chechnya?

Look at it the other way round. Yes, we all know that Syria’s intelligence service has committed human rights abuses. They did that in Lebanon. Yes, we all know this is a regime in Damascus, not an elected government. Yes, we all know about corruption. Yes, we watched the UN’s humiliation at the weekend – although why La Clinton should expect the Russians to click their heels after the “no-fly zone” in Libya turned into “regime change” is a bit of a mystery.

The destruction of the Alawite-led government in Syria – which means in effect, a Shia regime – will be a sword in the soul of Shia Iran. And look at the Middle East now from the windows of the massive presidential palace that overlooks the old city of Damascus. True, the Gulf has turned against Syria. True, Turkey has turned against Syria (while generously offering Bashar exile in the old Ottoman empire).

But look east, and what does Bashar see? Loyal Iran standing with him. Loyal Iraq – Iran’s new best friend in the Arab world – refusing to impose sanctions. And to the west, loyal little Lebanon refusing to impose sanctions. Thus from the border of Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, Assad has a straight line of alliances which should prevent, at least, his economic collapse.

The trouble is that the West has been so deluged with stories and lectures and think-tank nonsense about the ghastly Iran and the unfaithful Iraq and the vicious Syria and the frightened Lebanon that it is almost impossible to snap off these delusional pictures and realise that Assad is not alone. That is not to praise Assad or to support his continuation. But it’s real.

The Turks, after much Clinton-style huffing and puffing, did not follow through on their “cordon sanitaire” in northern Syria. Nor did King Abdullah II follow through on the Syrian opposition’s call for a Jordanian “cordon sanitaire” in the south. Oddly, I repeat yet again, only Israel has remained silent.

As long as Syria can trade with Iraq, it can trade with Iran and, of course, it can trade with Lebanon. The Shia of Iran and the Shia majority in Iraq and the Shia leadership (though not majority) in Syria and the Shia (the largest community, but not a majority) in Lebanon will be on Assad’s side, however reluctantly. That, I’m afraid, is the way the cookie crumbles. Crazed Gaddafi had real enemies with firepower and Nato. Assad’s enemies have Kalashnikovs and no Nato.

Assad has Damascus and Aleppo, and those cities matter. His principal military units have not defected to the opposition.

The “good guys” also contain “bad guys” – a fact we forgot in Libya, even when the “good guys” murdered their defected army commander and tortured prisoners to death. Oh yes, and the Royal Navy was able to put into Benghazi. It cannot put into Tartous because the Russian Navy is still there.