A New York Times article on how the Obama administration is considering directly arming the Syrian rebels states in the second half (bold emphasis added):
Last fall, President Obama rejected a proposal to arm carefully vetted elements of the opposition that originated with David H. Petraeus, who was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The proposal was supported by then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mr. Hagel’s predecessor, Leon E. Panetta, as well as by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey.
At the time, however, officials said Mr. Obama and his advisers believed that there was too high a risk of American weapons’ falling into the hands of unreliable or extremist elements. They said they worried in particular about weapons like shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles, which could be used against Israeli commercial airliners.
Even if Mr. Obama approves a plan to provide weapons, a senior administration official said, it would probably not include such weapons or antitank weapons, which the rebels have requested.
The official stressed that the decision would build on existing commitments of nonlethal military equipment like body armor and night vision goggles. The United States has also pledged medicine and food rations, which it has just begun delivering.
Ah, the selective amnesia of the mainstream media, which I’ve commented on again and again and again and again. Once again, let me remind that the CIA has already been coordinating the flow of arms to rebel forces, whose ranks include foreign jihadists, with Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front (an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq) taking on a key role, being what the Times has previously called “one of the uprising’s most effective fighting forces”, and with “[m]ost of the arms” funneled by the CIA to the rebels from Saudi Arabia and Qatar “going to hard-line Islamic jihadists”, as the Times has also previously noted.
So, if the Times didn’t suffer from selective amnesia, what they would report is that while Obama rejected a plan to directly arm rebels, ostensibly out of concern that they would fall into the hands of jihadists, he nevertheless did approve a plan to indirectly arm them by having the CIA coordinate arms transfers from regional allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and, as predicted, most of the weapons did indeed end up in the hands of jihadists.
Draw your own conclusions.
