Tag Archives: Syria

Continuing to Low-ball Jihadis in Syria Will Come Back to Bite Us

The mainstream media and the Obama Administration continue to minimize the extent of jihadi influence in Syria, even while ostensibly reporting on the threat possessed by battle-hardened foreign fighters returning from the civil war there.

In his column, “A nightmare group in Syria could target the U.S.”, David Ignatius cites U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, where Clapper caps the number of extremists operating in Syria at “26,000.”

The Administration has held steady at 26,000 “extremists” (an ill-defined largely meaningless term), even as Syria-watchers have put the number of self-described jihadists and those seeking to establish an Islamic state, or implement shariah, much higher.  As far back as September of last year, reports indicated that “nearly half” of the Syrian opposition are “Islamist” in disposition.

And there are some who would whittle down the 26,000 “extremists”  even lower if they could get away with it.  In January, in the Council on Foreign Relation’s online magazine Foreign Affairs, in an article subtitled, “An Al Qaeda-linked Group Worth Befriending” Michael Doran, William McCants, and Clint Watts made the case for working with Ahr Al-Sham, an Islamist militia at the time led by the now deceased Al Qaeda member Khalid Al-Suri. Ahr Al-Sham is a dominant part of the Islamic Front faction and routinely fights alongside the Al Nusra Front. The Islamic Front was cited as a partner worth working with by the head of the Syrian Emergency Task Force Mouaz Moustafa. Links have been reported between the SETF and the Global Muslim Brotherhood. Because of the reportedly close links between SETF and the State Department, it’s not surprising that the U.S. did in fact attempt to reach out to the Islamic Front, only to be rebuffed.

This tendency to define jihadists and ties to terrorism downward will come back to bite us.

Combine the Obama Administration decision to loosened rules to permit those who have engaged in “limited material support” for terrorism into the country, with revelations by Sen. Chuck Grassley of a DHS “Hands off” list for those with known terrorism ties, and the ever present tendency to define threats down to the lowest possible common denominator, and we have a recipe for disaster.

However the Syrian civil war ends, it is not  hard to imagine that we may see lining up on our borders asylum seekers confidently informing Immigration agents, “Oh, no, I’m not an extremist. I provided limited material support for the AL-Qaeda-linked group that even the State Department wanted to befriend.”

Syria’s Not Disarmed

Syria has missed another deadline with respect to its commitment to dispose of all its chemical weapons.

We’re told, however, that Bashar Assad’s regime has surrendered nearly all its declared stockpile, and the rest should follow in the near future.

Unfortunately, the Syrian government’s “declarations” may not account for chemical weapons it has squirreled away.

Assad’s forces are also alleged recently to have dropped bombs loaded with chlorine gas. That’s a chemical long used as a weapon, but – since it also has commercial applications – it’s an agent Syria can retain.

In short, a lot of deadly chemical agents have been removed from Syria and, therefore, won’t be employed against either combatants or civilians. But a lot may remain, and yet be used in a horrific conflict that shows no sign of abating.

Russian Invasion of the Crimean Peninsula Still Garnering Only Weak Response from the International Community

Donate Now

Secure Freedom Radio is made possible by listeners like you.

With Claudia Rosett, Diana West, Andy McCarthy, Ted Bromund

Journalist in Residence at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies CLAUDIA ROSETT runs through the international responses to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of the Crimea. She highlights particularly the UN General Assembly’s resolution condemning the invasion, which directly named Russia only once. Rosett also describes the effect the differences between US rhetoric and actions are having on China’s military buildup.

DIANA WEST, author of “American Betrayal”, examines Marxist sentiments found throughout the US. She argues that these feelings are a legacy of the US’s failure to completely win the ideological battle of the Cold War.

ANDY McCARTHY, former federal prosecutor, offers his insight into the possible ramifications of further U.S. involvement in the Syrian conflict. He contends that this issue, in addition to the Russian-Ukraine conflict and the Israeli peace talks, comprise the top diplomatic failures of President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.

TED BROMUND, senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, details the fundamental vagueness of the United Nations when addressing human rights standards in its Arms Trade Treaty. He further explains how this language may preclude future U.S. policies towards Israel and Taiwan.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Obama Switches Sides

It’s long been clear that, under the Obama administration, America has switched sides in the War for the Free World.

Today, we are arming al Qaeda in Syria, underwriting Iran and embracing the Muslim Brotherhood – a subversive jihadist group sworn to our destruction.

A particularly alarming manifestation of this crazy policy reversal was a recent announcement: From now on, asylum-seekers who have only engaged in “limited” material support for terrorism can get refuge in the United States.

Meanwhile, Team Obama has reportedly been denying visas to Israelis engaged in fighting our mutual terrorist enemies and protecting one of our most important allies.

The take-away is unmistakable: It’s much better to be a mortal enemy of this country than its friend.

Whose side is President Obama on?

The Israeli Golan

Last week, I was on the Golan Heights, a mountainous area where Israel and Syria meet.  In Israeli hands, this bitterly contested frontier has nonetheless for the past four decades been one of the world’s most quiet.

I could hear heavy weapons fire from Syria’s civil war in the distance, though.  And this week, some two hundred of Bashir Assad’s armored vehicles have been shooting at rebel forces so close to the border that two Israeli soldiers were injured yesterday.

The last time massed Syrian armor fired on the Golan was to launch the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Ever since it won, Israel has been told to return the Heights to Assad.  Had the Israelis foolishly done so, instead of a civil war in Syria, the next regional conflict might already have started.

Obama’s disarmed diplomacy

In the past month, Americans have been led to believe that President Obama has achieved diplomatic breakthroughs with Syria and Iran, thereby avoiding looming conflicts with those two rogue states.  If the result being promised is not exactly “peace in our time,” the White House certainly is encouraging the notion that its robust threats of military action against these allied enemies brought them to the negotiating table.

Regrettably, this proposition does not stand up to scrutiny.  Far from a Reaganesque policy of “peace through strength” and the practice of what historian Henry Nau calls “armed diplomacy” that it has made successful in the past, Team Obama is engaged in disarmed diplomacy.  The results will, predictably, be disappointing and probably quite dangerous.

For example, with help from his Russian protectors, Syrian dictator Bashir Assad has now bought himself protection against any strike the United States might still be capable of mounting by promising to eliminate his chemical stockpiles. No amount of officially professed U.S. “skepticism” or watered-down UN resolutions can obscure an unhappy fact: Assad’s regime is not owning up to all of its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction – which includes not only more chemical weapons than it has declared, but untold quantities of deadly biological weapons, as well.

Meanwhile, as international inspectors – not a few of whom will be Russians who can be expected to run interference for their client – prepare for the hazardous, if not impossible, job of finding and eliminating all of what the Syrians have squirreled away, Assad will have a free hand to fight his Islamist and other enemies at home with conventional means. Obama’s arming of Assad’s foes, and ours, inside Syria will probably simply ensure that civil war goes murderously on for quite some time.

The prospects for a happy outcome for Obama’s disarmed diplomacy are no better with respect to Iran.  Smooth-talking Iranian leaders brought their selective charm offensive to New York last week.  In short order, they demonstrated contempt for the President by stiffing his offer of some sort of publicized encounter.

Worse, they established his desperation for a new pretext for staving off pressure from Israel and Congress for action on Iran’s incipient nuclear weapons capability.  Mr. Obama paid dearly for it: offering to begin to unravel American and multilateral sanctions in exchange for nothing more than new negotiations – albeit ones that will, we’re assured, be less protracted and more productive than each of the previous ones with this and other Iranian interlocutors.

The truth is that our adversaries, whether they be in Damascus, Tehran, Moscow, Beijing or elsewhere have not simply taken the measure this wholly inadequate American president.  They are responding to all he is doing to emasculate what has been the principal obstacle to their ambitions: our military, long the world’s finest.

It takes nothing away from the men and women who are faithfully serving their country in uniform to point out that they are not being given the wherewithal – notably the funding for training, maintenance and modernization – needed to keep the peace.

To get a proper perspective on what is being done to “fundamentally transform” our armed forces, however, one must also look beyond the condition of the military itself. A leading indicator of future incapacity to perform its mission by, among other things, making the alternative to diplomacy unappealing to our foes, can be found in the simultaneous evisceration of the nation’s defense industrial base.

To cite but one illustrative example:  Boeing announced recently that it would have to shut down the production line for the C-17, the Free World’s only modern, wide-bodied airlifter.  A sequestration-induced lack of orders from the U.S. military and uncertainty about the prospects for foreign sales would effectively foreclose future purchases of the aircraft that will be, for the foreseeable future, the backbone of our prompt power-projection capabilities.

Take no comfort from suggestions that we can always reopen the line when (not if) more C-17s are needed.  The harsh reality is that, even if the machine tools and other specialized equipment associated with manufacturing such a sophisticated airplane are not sold off, say, to China (as was done with the B-1 bomber’s production line), the workforce and highly perishable second- and third-tier suppliers are unlikely to be reassembled and certified – certainly not anytime soon.  Therefore, we must not let the C-17 line be closed.

Similar problems are to be expected with the contraction of the industrial base needed to supply tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, fighter aircraft and combatant ships.  Perhaps not right away but in due course, bad guys all over the planet will know that we lack the means to mount an effective, or at least a sustained, impediment to their aggressive designs.  That is a formula for more conflict, not peace.

The Lexington Institute’s splendid Dan Goure has warned, the U.S. military is already “unready.”  So have the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who have told Congress that if sequestration persists, they will not be able to fight even one war to assured victory.

What we have seen in the last month, and will surely witness more of in the days and years to come, is how ready our adversaries are to take advantage – diplomatically and otherwise – of our self-inflicted and unilateral disarmament.

Bolton: Obama’s Syria Policy is Good for Iran, Bad for the US

“I think Rouhani, I think the Russians, I think Assad and Syria are seeing in Obama what I call the P.T. Barnum doctrine of foreign policy, which is ‘there’s a sucker born every minute.’ He’s sitting in the White House right now, and they’re going to take advantage of it,” said former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, less than a week before President Barack Obama and Iranian president Hassan Rouhani are expected to meet at the UN General Assembly meeting in New York City.

In particular, Bolton told host Frank Gaffney on Friday’s Secure Freedom Radio, Obama’s inaction in Syria are more likely than not providing encouragement to the already dangerous Iranian nuclear weapons program.

“Obama has long believed he can negotiate some kind of satisfactory resolution of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. I think that’s delusional. I don’t think the regime will ever give up its nuclear weapons,” said Bolton. “But what they can get from Obama is an agreement that in effect legitimizes their nuclear program, frees them from the risk of an American strike—not that I think there’s much of one under this administration—and allows Obama to put considerable pressure on Israel not to strike Iran. I’m very afraid we’re in a vulnerable position and the Iranians are poised to take full advantage of it.”

Bolton also expressed his skepticism towards the Russian-backed proposal for the Syrian government to willingly surrender its nuclear weapons. “I think the agreement Secretary of State Kerry reached with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, buys time for the Assad regime. They will destroy some chemical weapons to be sure, but the rest are hidden or already transferred to Lebanon, or possibly even back to Iraq.”

Because of Bolton’s concern that America’s national security policy is no longer being “based on American interests, and our interests around the world,” he has set up The John Bolton PAC and The John Bolton Super PAC to help House and Senate candidates in the 2014 elections who understand the importance of national security.

Syria, Iran and the North Korean Model

Did US President Barack Obama score a great victory for the United States by concluding a deal with Russia on Syria’s chemical weapons or has he caused irreparable harm to the US’s reputation and international position? By what standard can we judge his actions when the results will only be known next year? To summarize where things now stand, last Saturday US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov concluded an agreement regarding Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. The agreement requires Syria to provide full details on the size and locations of all of its chemical weapons by this Saturday. It requires international inspectors to go to Syria beginning in November, and to destroy or remove Syria’s chemical weapons from the country by June 2014.

Obama and Kerry have trumpeted the agreement as a great accomplishment. They say it could never have been concluded had the US not threatened to carry out “unbelievably small” punitive military strikes against the Syrian regime in response to its use of Sarin gas to massacre 1,400 civilians in the suburbs of Damascus on August 21.

And then there is the perception of an “Iran dividend” from the US-Russian deal. Just two days after last Saturday’s agreement, speculation mounted about a possible breakthrough in the six party negotiations with Iran regarding its illicit nuclear weapons program.

According to Der Spiegel, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani may consider closing down Iran’s illicit uranium enrichment facility at Fordo under IAEA supervision in exchange for the removal or weakening of economic sanctions against Iran’s oil exports and its central bank.

The White House has not ruled out the possibility that Obama and Rouhani may meet at the UN General Assembly meeting later this month. These moves could pave the way for a reinstatement of full diplomatic relations between the US and Iran. Those relations were cut off after the regime-supported takeover of the US embassy in Teheran in 1979.

Obama’s supporters in the US media and Congress have hailed these developments as foreign policy victories for the United States. Thanks to Obama’s brilliant maneuvering, Syria has agreed to disarm from its chemical weapons without the US having had to fire a shot. The Iranians’ increased willingness to be forthcoming on their nuclear program is similarly a consequence of Obama’s tough and smart diplomacy regarding Syria, and his clever utilization of Russia as a long arm of US foreign policy.

For their part, critics have lined up to condemn Obama’s decision to cut a deal with Russia regarding Syria.

They warn that his actions in that regard have destroyed the credibility of his threat to use force to prevent Iran from developing or deploying nuclear weapons.

To determine which side is right in this debate, we need to look no further than North Korea.

In April 1992 the IAEA concluded that North Korea was hiding information on its nuclear program from the UN and declared it in breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty it signed in 1985. In March 1993 North Korea announced its intention to vacate its signature from the NPT. Later that year, it later offered to begin negotiations related to its illicit nuclear program with the US.

Those negotiations began in early 1994, after the US canceled planned joint military exercises with South Korea as a goodwill gesture to the North. The talks led to the Agreed-Framework Agreement concluded later that year under which North Korea agreed to shutter its nuclear installation at Yongbyon where it was suspected of developing plutonium based nuclear weapons. In exchange the US and its allies agreed to build light water nuclear reactors in North Korea, and to provide North Korea with oil for energy production until the reactors were up and running.

In November 2002 the North Koreans acknowledged that they were engaging in illicit uranium enrichment activities. In January 2003 Pyongyang announced it was withdrawing from the NPT.

In February 2005 it announced it possessed a nuclear arsenal. And on October 9, 2006, North Korea launched its first test of a nuclear bomb.

The US suspended its talks with North Korea in 2003. It responded to the nuclear test by renewing those negotiations just weeks after it took place. And in February 2007 the US and North Korea reached an agreement under which Pyongyang agreed to close down Yongbyon in exchange for a resumption of shipments of free oil.

In September 2007, against the strenuous opposition of then secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who was the architect of the US’s renewed push to cut a deal with North Korea, Israel destroyed a North Korean built nuclear reactor almost identical to the Yongbyon nuclear reactor in the Syrian desert. Had it become operational, Syria would likely have developed a nuclear arsenal by now.

In June 2008, the North Koreans demolished Yongbyon’s cooling tower.

Amidst fears that North Korea had reopened the reactor in the fall of 2008, the US removed North Korea from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Six months later, in April 2009, Pyongyang resumed its reprocessing of spent fuel rods for the production of plutonium. And the next month it conducted another nuclear test.

In 2010, North Korean scientists at Yongbyon told Siegfried Hecker, a former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory that the plutonium reactor had been shuttered.

Later in 2010, the North Koreans began open enrichment of uranium at Yongbyon.

Enrichment activities have doubled in scale since 2010. US experts now assess that with 4,000 centrifuges operating, North Korea produces enough enriched uranium to build three uranium based nuclear bombs every year. On February 12, 2013 North Korea conducted a third nuclear test. Experts were unclear whether the tested bomb a plutoniumbased or uranium-based nuclear weapon.

On September 11, the media reported that the latest satellite imagery indicates the North Koreans have resumed their plutonium production activities at Yongbyon.

Although the media claim that this represents an abrogation of the 2007 deal, it is unclear why that deal was considered in place given that North Korea began its reprocessing activities in April 2009 and tested another nuclear weapon the next month.

Although it issued a strong statement condemning the reopening of the plutonium operation at Yongbyon, the Obama administration remains committed to the sixparty talks with North Korea.

When viewed as a model for general US-non-proliferation policy, rather than one specific to North Korea, the North Korean model involves a rogue state using the Chinese and Russians to block effective UN Security Council action against its illicit development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Faced with a dead end at the UN, the US is forced to decide between acting on its own to compel a cessation of the illicit behavior, or to try to cut a deal with the regime, either through bilateral or multilateral negotiations.

Not wishing to enter into an unwanted confrontation or suffer domestic and international condemnations of American unilateralism, the US opts for diplomacy. The decision is controversial in Washington. And to justify their decision, the champions of negotiating deals with rogue proliferators stake their personal reputations on the success of that policy.

In the case of Rice, her decision to open negotiations with North Korea following its nuclear test was staunchly opposed by vice president Dick Cheney. And once the policy was exposed as a failure first by the intelligence reports proving that North Korea was proliferating its nuclear technologies and know-how to Syria, and then with its early suspension of its agreement to the 2007 agreement, rather than acknowledge her mistake, she doubled down. And as a consequence, under the nose of the US, and with Washington pledged to a framework deal to which North Korea stood in continuous breach, North Korea carried out two more nuclear tests, massively expanded its uranium enrichment activities, and reinstated its plutonium production activities.

Just as importantly, once the US accepted the notion of talks with North Korea, it necessarily accepted the regime’s legitimacy. And as a consequence, both the Clinton and Bush administrations abandoned any thought of toppling the regime. Once Washington ensnared itself in negotiations that strengthened its enemy at America’s expense, it became the effective guarantor of the regime’s survival. After all, if the regime is credible enough to be trusted to keep its word, then it is legitimate no matter how many innocents it has enslaved and slaughtered.

With the US’s experience with North Korea clearly in mind, it is possible to assess US actions with regards to Syria and Iran. The first thing that becomes clear is that the Obama administration is implementing the North Korean model in its dealings with Syria and Iran.

With regards to Syria, there is no conceivable way to peacefully enforce the US Russian agreement on the ground. Technically it is almost impossible to safely dispose of chemical weapons under the best of circumstances.

Given that Syria is in the midst of a brutal civil war, the notion that it is possible for UN inspectors to remove or destroy the regime’s chemical weapons is patently absurd.

Moreover, since the agreement itself requires non-compliance complaints to be discussed first at the UN Security Council, and it is clear that Russia is willing to do anything to protect the Syrian regime, no action will be taken to punish non-compliance.

Finally, like his predecessors with regard to Pyongyang, Obama has effectively accepted the continued legitimacy of the regime of Bashar Assad, despite the fact that he is an acknowledged war criminal.

As was the case with Pyongyang and its nuclear brinkmanship and weapons tests, Assad won his legitimacy and removed the US threat to remove him from power by using weapons of mass destruction.

As for Iran, Rouhani’s talk of closing Fordo needs to be viewed against the precedents set at Yongbyon by the North Koreans. In other words, even if the installation is shuttered, there is every reason to believe that the shutdown will be temporary. On the other hand, just as North Korea remains off the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism despite the fact that since its removal it carried out two more nuclear tests, it is hard to imagine that sanctions on Iran’s oil exports and central bank removed in exchange for an Iranian pledge to close Fordo, would be restored after Fordo is reopened.

Like North Korea, Iran will negotiate until it is ready to vacate its signature on the NPT and test its first nuclear weapon.

The critics are correct. And the danger posed by Obama’s decision to seek a false compromise rather than accept an unwanted confrontation following Syria’s use of chemical weapons will only be removed when the US recognizes the folly of seeking to wish away the dangers of weapons of mass destruction through negotiations. Those talks lead only to the diminishment of US power and the endangerment of US national security as more US enemies develop and deploy weapons of mass destruction with the sure knowledge that the US would rather negotiate fecklessly than contend responsibly with the dangers they pose.

High Crimes and Misdemeanors

It’s been clear for some time that, under President Obama, we have switched sides in the so-called “War on Terror.” This week, he made it official.

To clear the way for stepped up shipments of arms to Syrian “rebels,” Mr. Obama waived laws that would prohibit transfers of defensive and, for that matter, offensive gear.  He had to do so since the opposition not only includes terrorists, among them Islamists like al Qaeda sworn to our destruction.  It is actually dominated by them.

On his radio and TV shows yesterday, Glenn Beck observed that this amounts to providing aid and comfort to our enemy.  He noted that would fit the definition of treason, and be an impeachable offense.  At the very least, it is reckless and a threat to our security.

Influential U.S. Syria Expert: Not All Islamists Are Enemies of West

The coverage of the downfall of Elizabeth O’Bagy, a very influential expert on Syria who was found to have lied about her credentials, is missing an important element: O’Bagy based her assessments on the notion that not all Islamists are enemies of the West.

O’Bagy burst onto the scene as the leading Syria expert for the Institute of the Study of War at age 26. She was the center of attention when her August 30 editorial in the Wall Street Journal argued that concern about the composition of the Syrian rebels is overblown. It was subsequently cited by Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Secretary of State John Kerry.

“Contrary to many media accounts, the war in Syria is not being waged entirely, or even predominantly, by dangerous Islamists and al Qaeda die-hards,” O’Bagy wrote.

The Wall Street Journal was hammered for not disclosing O’Bagy’s position with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an opposition group linked to the rebels and who facilitated a meeting between Senator McCain and rebel commanders in Syria in May.

O’Bagy was fired by the Institute for the Study of War for falsely claiming she had a doctorate from Georgetown University.

More importantly, O’Bagy wasn’t merely tied to the Syrian opposition, a connection that shouldn’t necessarily disqualify her as an expert (though it should be disclosed), the advice she gave top U.S. officials did not treat the terms “Islamist” and “moderate” as mutually exclusive terms. This inflated the numbers of the so-called “moderates” and deflated the number of extremists.

On September 7, she tweeted, “Islamist groups [are] very different than AQ linked groups and extremists. Different outlook, ideology, relations with people, etc.”

Her Twitter account has since been deleted but the Clarion Project has a screenshot.

Contradicting her analysis, Clarion reported in June that 10 of 12 rebel groups are Islamist with another one linked to Kurdish terrorists. The remaining force also has Islamists in its ranks. There is indeed a power struggle between Islamist and non-Islamist rebels, but the secular forces are outmatched by their Islamist competitors.

O’Bagy’s perception of what qualifies as “moderate” falls in line with the agenda of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an opposition group linked to the Syrian rebels that paid her as a contractor.

The executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force is Mouaz Moustafa, who admitted that his antagonism against Israel is stronger than his feelings against Al-Qaeda. He tweeted on June 5: “nothing hurts me more than being called pro Zionist, ive been called al Qaeda and terrorist etc but being called Zionist kills me when my family are n camps just come see where I grew up Palestine lives in me”

Moustafa also reportedly “liked” a video on YouTube that shows Hamas terror leader in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh praying. Moustafa’s playlist of “favorite” videos include explicitly pro-terrorist music videos that have a montage of photos celebrating Hamas and Hezbollah. One is titled “A LA INTIFADA !!!” and the other is named  “INTIFADA!!!” It opens with the text, “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea.” That implies the elimination of Israel.

O’Bagy is still listed as the Syrian Emergency Task Force’s Political Director.

Daniel Greenfield discovered three members of the Syria Emergency Task Force Board of Trustees/Board of Directors are linked to U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities: Dr. Jihad Qaddour was a trustee of the Muslim American Society; Bassam Estwani is a former imam of the radical Dar al-Hijrah mosque and Zaher Saloul is chairman of the Council on Islamic Organizations of Chicago.

In September 2011, the Los Angeles chapter of the group held an event with the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity. A State Department official was one of the speakers.

Cassie Chesley was listed as the Syria Emergency Task Force’s Communications, but his name has since been removed from the group’s website, as was the name of Research Associate Ahmad Soliman, who attended an event of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) at the University of Michigan about one year ago. ISNA is a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity.

These organizations as a whole are impacting U.S. policy, not just O’Bagy. As mentioned, the Syrian Emergency Task Force acts as a middle-man for Senator McCain’s meetings with the rebels. The organization also gets funding from the State Department. The Syrian Support Group, a separate but linked organization, is the main liaison for the U.S. government to the rebels.

These are the groups and experts that are informing our leaders. Did anyone in the U.S. government do a basic background check?