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That's why Stevens was meeting the Turkish delegation there.
The US is giving Pakistan money to buy weapons from Iran to give to ISIS/al-Qaida.
Meeting the Turkish delegation at US Embassy Mission Tripoli would be too high profile and might inadvertently expose the operation.
This is not the first time the US has done that.
There were a number of partners in the Syria war, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait, who had set up armories to funnel the arms collected by the CIA at the embassy annex in Benghazi and transport them to Syria through the port of Ceyhan in Turkey. The AP newswire published an expose' on the arms trafficking scheme after the embassy attack which included a map of the location of the armories in close proximity to the embassy.
This was before Obama signed the 2013 executive order authorizing the CIA to arm the rebels in Syria.
Up until then, they were using the allied governments' intelligence agencies as go-betweens to work around the absence of having a formal order.
The arrangement is referred to in descriptions of Timber Sycamore, the CIA plan to arm the rebels to wage war on Syria.
Trump agrees to withdraw from Syria because of a threat from Turkey, then insinuates that this is his plan to remove troops from the middle east and celebrates. Then he sends the same troops to Iraq and increases troops in Saudi Arabia. Threatens severe sanctions to Turkey then backs off after a 170 hour cease fire.
Now he is claiming that he worked out a deal for the SDF to protect the oil fields from Iran and once again claims this is part of his plan.
Did I miss anything.
We are truly in crazy land, listening to the events this week is an out of body experience.
Trump now is talking about bringing in an American oil company to develop the fields. Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said today that the Putin-Erdogan meeting will clarify who will control the oil-rich areas of northeast Syria. SANA (Syrian News) indicates Syrian troops are continuing to move into northeastern Syria now reaching Tal Tamer, which is away from the border towards the northeastern tip of Syria.
Another interesting tidbit:
September 14 - Assad granted an amnesty for "crimes" committed before that date (SANA). Earlier there appears to have been an informal amnesty within some former rebel-held towns that had been granted some autonomy. Former-Assad opponents who left those areas were subject to arrest or assassination (Haaretz).
Last edited by EveryLady; 10-22-2019 at 11:32 AM..
There were a number of partners in the Syria war, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait, who had set up armories to funnel the arms collected by the CIA at the embassy annex in Benghazi and transport them to Syria through the port of Ceyhan in Turkey. The AP newswire published an expose' on the arms trafficking scheme after the embassy attack which included a map of the location of the armories in close proximity to the embassy.
This was before Obama signed the 2013 executive order authorizing the CIA to arm the rebels in Syria.
Up until then, they were using the allied governments' intelligence agencies as go-betweens to work around the absence of having a formal order.
The arrangement is referred to in descriptions of Timber Sycamore, the CIA plan to arm the rebels to wage war on Syria.
The program officially ended in July 2017, killed by Trump at the urging of then-CIA director Mike Pompeo. Israel is not one of your listed armory partners but almost certainly was a driving force behind the initial implementation and today continues to call for regime change.
It's not clear whether there actually have been any PKK-related incursions into Turkey from Kurd-controlled areas. Arms trafficking may well be another story, with this an interesting quote:
Quote:
A couple of weeks after Turkey launched Operation Olive Branch in Syria in 2018, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called U.S. President Donald Trump. He informed Trump that U.S. weapons had been seized in tunnels dug by the YPG, the Syrian wing of the PKK, recognized by Ankara’s Western allies as a terrorist organization.
“The weapons that your Congress is refusing to sell to Turkey; we find them in the tunnels dug by the terrorists,†Erdoğan told Trump.
Seeing as how Putin owns Trump, it makes sense now why Donny is pulling our forces out.
Putin gives the order, Trump does as he's told.
Maybe yes, maybe no. Here's a Turkish opinion piece on Trumpian decision-making:
"The Turkish president has had ample opportunities to understand how Trump functions. He is not so much into grandiose political strategies. His God is money. Realizing that, the Turkish side fast became aware that they could lure Trump by trade; hence, came the target of increasing the bilateral trade volume to $100 billion from $20 billion, which would mean serious purchases from the United States." Turkey's safe zone in Syria does not look like a temporary 'fix'
Personally, I'm convinced that Trump's ire at having to 'pay' the Kurds to babysit ISIS (as shown by the frequency of that topics in his tweets) played some role in the impulsiveness behind the decision. There was no immediate dollar-return from that expenditure.
More broadly, combined American weapon sales now approach $200 billion annually:
"The Trump administration has made selling American defense goods abroad a key plank of its governance plan, under the guiding principal that “economic security is national security.” Earlier this year, the department rolled out its new Conventional Arms Transfer policy, or CAT, as well as new guidance for selling unmanned systems, with the explicit goal of increasing arms sales." https://www.defensenews.com/industry...up-13-percent/
Tass announcing an settlement, with a press conference and details to follow. The Russian-Turkey agreement, from the perspective of Turkish news:
Quote:
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Oct. 22 agreed on a new accord for the creation of a safe zone in Syria’s north along the Turkish border.
According to the deal, the status quo in the “Operation Peace Spring” zone will be preserved.
In 150 hours starting from Oct. 23 noon, all YPG militants will withdraw beyond the 30-kilometer line from the Turkish border with their guns and their fortifications will be destroyed.
At the same time, Turkish and Russian troops will begin patrols in the 10-kilometer zone in east and west of the operation zone to prevent militants’ infiltration to the safe zone.
The geographical length is not clear but it looks like Turkey did not get Manbij or Kobani or the strip to the east. The initial fighting focused on two border towns in the center of its proposed strip, Ras al Ain and Tel Abyad - with most of the reporting focused on Tel Abyad.
There were multiple pipelines for arms trafficking by the governments aligned against the Syrian government. Timber Sycamore and North Africa to Libya is just one. It's been very easy to pick up the Israeli news to find reports of Israeli support of rebels in both the Southern and Northern battle lines in Syria.
Anything Trump states can't be taken at face value. Timber Sycamore wasn't killed. It was claimed to have been phased out. The agencies and governments waging war there have often undertaken actions at odds with what Trump claims to be policy. This has been a repeated occurrence and one has to assume by now that he is fully aware that he is not doing what he claims to be doing.
The simple explanation is that he lies, and the battles and chemical attacks ongoing into 2018 indicate that the rebels continued to receive arms and other supplies through their extensive tunnel networks. Given that the headlines and news reports often differ from the details on many subjects, the media is also culpable.
There were multiple pipelines for arms trafficking by the governments aligned against the Syrian government. Timber Sycamore and North Africa to Libya is just one. It's been very easy to pick up the Israeli news to find reports of Israeli support of rebels in both the Southern and Northern battle lines in Syria.
Anything Trump states can't be taken at face value. Timber Sycamore wasn't killed. It was claimed to have been phased out. The agencies and governments waging war there have often undertaken actions at odds with what Trump claims to be policy. This has been a repeated occurrence and one has to assume by now that he is fully aware that he is not doing what he claims to be doing.
What Trump is fully aware of is beyond my pay grade. But, yes, there are multiple constituencies with multiple input into what the United States does on any one day.
We don't normally force our allies to abandoned defensive positions and equipment based on the promise that we will be there to protect them, only to then sell them out and leave so they can be ethnically cleansed.
We don't normally force our allies to abandoned defensive positions and equipment based on the promise that we will be there to protect them, only to then sell them out and leave so they can be ethnically cleansed.
We forced our NATO ally Turkey to do this?
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