by WHITNEY WEBB
The Pentagon, looking northeast with the Potomac River and Washington Monument in the distance PHOTO/History
In shades of Iran-Contra, the Pentagon will be stepping in for the CIA as arms supplier for the “moderate rebels” in Syria. The CIA program was covert, and the Pentagon’s follows suit by falsifying paperwork to mask the destination of the weaponry, as revealed by a new report from two watchdogs.
On July 19, the Trump administration announced that it would end the CIA’s covert program aimed at arming and training terrorist-linked “moderate rebels” in Syria, sparking hope among some Trump supporters that he was finally enacting the anti-interventionist rhetoric of his campaign.
However, a recently released report shows that the Pentagon has picked up the slack left by the end of the CIA’s program — pumping billions of dollars worth of weapons into the hands of Syrian “rebels,” while attempting to mask the paper trail and their suppliers’ ties to organized crime.
The report, published Tuesday by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), provides conclusive evidence that the Pentagon plans to provide up to $2.2 billion in weapons to Syrian “rebel” groups, particularly Kurdish militant groups like the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). While the Pentagon has been arming “rebels” since 2015, the Department of Defense began requesting increased funding for the program once the CIA covert arms program was ostensibly slated to shut down
While the Pentagon has been arming “rebels” since 2015, the Department of Defense began requesting increased funding for the program once the CIA covert arms program was ostensibly slated to shut down.
The Pentagon has requested an additional $322.5 million for the financial year ending October 2017 and $261.9 million for the following 12 months. For fiscal years 2017 and 2018, the budget for the program has been set at $584 million while another $900 million has been earmarked to continue the program through 2022.
Just a lil quick sidenote: The Pentagon is spending $2 billion of taxpayer money running Soviet-era guns to Syria https://t.co/HJfFc8zdJg
— Robbie Gramer (@RobbieGramer) September 12, 2017
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