[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 40 (Tuesday, March 19, 2013)]
[House]
[Page H1572]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             THE CIA TAKES OPPOSITE SIDES IN SYRIA AND IRAQ

  Mr. McDERMOTT. What, really, could be more bizarre than this: as the 
United States ramps up its aid to Syria's ragtag rebels, whose backbone 
is comprised of radical Islamists and Sunni fundamentalists, some with 
ties to Al Qaeda, the CIA is busily engaged in combat inside Iraq with 
the very same radical Islamists and Sunni fundamentalists, some with 
ties to Al Qaeda.
  Yep, that's right.
  We're backing the same guys in Syria that we're fighting in Iraq.
  Of course, we shouldn't be involved in Iraq in any way, shape or 
form, but try telling that to the CIA. According to the Wall Street 
Journal:

       The Central Intelligence Agency is ramping up support to 
     elite Iraqi antiterrorism units to better fight al Qaeda 
     affiliates, amid alarm in Washington about spillover from the 
     civil war in neighboring Syria, according to US officials.
       The stepped-up mission expands a covert US presence on the 
     edges of the two-year-old Syrian conflict, at a time of 
     American concerns about the growing power of extremists in 
     the Syrian rebellion.

  The Journal notes that this isn't an accident. It was the result of a 
carefully thought-out White House decision:

       In a series of secret decisions from 2011 to late 2012, the 
     White House directed the CIA to provide support to Iraq's 
     Counterterrorism Service, or CTS, a force that reports 
     directly to Iraqi Prime Minister Nourial-Maliki, officials 
     said.

  The CIA has since ramped up its work with the CTS--taking control of 
a mission long run by the U.S. military, according to administration 
and defense officials. For years, U.S. special-operations forces worked 
with CTS against al Qaeda in Iraq. But the military's role has dwindled 
since U.S. troops pulled out of the country at the end of 2011.
  The paradox, obviously, is that Maliki, the guy we're helping in 
Iraq, is an ally of Iran's and is sympathetic to President Assad of 
Syria. That's because were the Sunni-led rebels in Syria to seize 
Damascus and topple Assad, they'd turn their wrath next door against 
the Shiite-led Maliki regime, and funnel weapons and fighters to 
support the Sunni-led rebels in Iraq.
  That's not stopping the United States, though, from boosting the 
fortunes of the Syrian rebels by funneling aid and support to them and 
coordinating the flow of weapons from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey. 
Meanwhile, as The New York Times has been reporting for a while, the 
same CIA that is trying to squash the Sunni rebels in Iraq is actually 
training Sunni rebels in a secret program in Jordan, to fight in Syria.
  Oddly enough, the rest of the media hasn't picked up on the Times 
reports on the CIA training efforts in Jordan, and the Times itself 
hasn't elaborated. How many gangsters are is the CIA training in 
Jordan? What are they doing?
  It all comes together in the recent reports that dozens of Syrian 
soldiers, loyal to Assad, who fled into Iraq recently, were then 
massacred by Iraqi Sunni crazies.
  We blundered, bungling, into Iraq in 2003 without knowing really a 
damn thing about the country we invaded. When will the United States 
learn that it doesn't know enough about the Middle East to go charging 
in there with guns, seemingly without a clue about what it all means?

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