Active-Duty Soldier Speaks Out: The Tip-Toe Toward WW3 Has Now Turned Into Giant Steps

Everything you thought you knew about U.S. involvement in Syria — and animosity toward Russia — has instead flourished from confusion wrought by intentional miscommunication and birthed from the minds of avid propagandists.

We know this with a degree of certainty, thanks to award-winning investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, obtained perhaps the most naked evidence of hapless government duplicity resulting in an unknowable number of deaths and, astonishingly, even a preposterously harrowing likelihood of world war.

Communications between an active duty U.S. soldier and a security adviser, both unnamed by Hersh, prove the narrative proffered by corporate media and establishment politicians for months — that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had carried out an horrific and deadly chemical weapons attack against Syrian civilians in Khan Sheikhoun — was a lie.

Should that not seem impactful enough, consider it was the assertion of a gruesome chemical attack by Assad against his own civilian populace which provided the putative impetus for U.S. retaliation in the firing of 59 missiles into the sovereign nation of Syria near Khan Sheikhoun, also resulting in a wholly unjustified number of civilian casualties.

Ineffectively destroying parts of a mostly-dormant airbase and killing innocents indeed, at the time, seemed a peculiar mission accomplished as broadcast news belched repetitively — and for good reason.

Beyond the determination Assad had not gassed his own, the U.S. knew there had been no chemical weapons incident, at all — and had been privy to cooperative intelligence among the warring parties that an airstrike would be carried out against a cache of weapons — characterized as a “legitimate military target” by the active duty soldier chat protocol with the adviser.

On April 6, 2017 — Hersh reported for German outlet, Die Welt — the American soldier seemed near panic in a communiqué to the security adviser, imploring,

“We got a fuckin‘ problem.”

“What happened?” the adviser asks. “Is it the Trump ignoring the Intel and going to try to hit the Syrians? And that we’re pissing on the Russians?”

Soldier: “This is bad…Things are spooling up.”

Adviser: “You may not have seen trumps press conference yesterday. He’s bought into the media story without asking to see the Intel. We are likely to get our asses kicked by the Russians. Fucking dangerous. Where are the godamn adults? The failure of the chain of command to tell the President the truth, whether he wants to hear it or not, will go down in history as one of our worst moments.”

Soldier: “I don’t know. None of this makes any sense. We KNOW that there was no chemical attack. The Syrians struck a weapons cache (a legitimate military target) and there was collateral damage. That’s it. They did not conduct any sort of a chemical attack […]

“And now we’re shoving a shit load of TLAMs (tomahawks) up their ass.”

Adviser: “There has been a hidden agenda all along. This is about trying to ultimately go after Iran. What the people around Trump do not understand is that the Russians are not a paper tiger and that they have more robust military capability than we do.”

Soldier: “I don’t know what the Russians are going to do. They might hang back and let the Syrians defend their own borders, or they might provide some sort of tepid support, or they might blow us the fuck out of the airspace and back into Iraq. I honestly don’t know what to expect right now. I feel like anything is possible.  The russian air defense system is capable of taking out our TLAMs.  this is a big fucking deal…we are still all systems go…

Adviser: “You are so right. Russia is not going to take this lying down.

“Who is pushing this? Is it coming from [General Joseph L. Votel, Commander of United States Central Command]?”

Soldier: “I don’t know. It’s from someone big though. . . . This is a big fucking deal.

“It has to be POTUS.

“They [the Russians] are weighing their options.  Indications are they are going to be passive supporters of syria and not engage their systems unless their own assets are threatened..in other words, the sky is fucking blue.’”

***

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In case you missed it, the unnamed security adviser brazenly suggests feckless U.S. military aggression in Syria pertains to a murky, but penultimate, goal with Iran — that, and the altogether foreboding indication Russia, a foe who should not be and the object of Western provocation, would outperform American forces should hostilities flare.

Communications between the pair of insiders continued the following day, April 7:

Adviser: “What are the Russians doing or saying  Am I correct that we did little real damage to Russia or Syria?”

Soldier: “We didn’t hit a damn thing, thankfully. They retrograded all their aircraft and personnel. We basically gave them a very expensive fireworks display.

“They knew where ships were and watched the entire strike from launch to end game.

“The Russians are furious. Claiming we have the real Intel and know the truth about the weapons depot strike.

“They are correct.

“I guess it really didn’t matter whether we elected Clinton or Trump. Fuck.

“No one is talking about the entire reason we’re in Iraq and Syria in the first place. That mission is fucked now.”

Adviser: “Are any of your colleagues pissed or is everyone going along with it and saying this is OK.”

Soldier: “It’s a mad house. . . .Hell we even told the Russians an hour before impact.”

Adviser: “But they clearly knew it was coming.”

Soldier: “Oh of course.

“Now Fox is saying we chose to hit the Syrian airfield because it is where the chemical attacks were launched from. Wow. Can’t make this shit up.”

Adviser: “They are. I mean, making it up.”

Soldier: “It’s so fuckin evil.”

Adviser: “Amen!!!”

And, again, on April 8:

Soldier: “Russians are being extremely reasonable. Despite what the news is reporting they are still trying to deconflict and coordinate the air campaign.”

Adviser: “I don’t think the Russia yet understands how crazy Trump is over this.  And I don’t think we appreciate how much damage the Russians can do to us.”

Soldier: “They’re showing amazing restraint and been unbelievably calm. They seem mostly interested in de-escalating everything. They don’t want to lose our support in the help with destroying Isis.”

Adviser: “But I get the get the feeling are simply trying this approach for as long as they feel it might work. If we keep pushing this current aggressive stance they’re going to hit back.”

***

Die Welt ostensively withheld only information considered sensitive, including details pertaining to precise location and nature of operations — but, considering Hersh’ itinerant adherence to journalistic principles, the report should be examined with more than a grain of salt.

If, indeed, the communications prove true, the documents could reveal more about censorship, a possibly-rogue media establishment, and an undeniable foolishness — and, more keenly, helplessness — in the haphazard rush to many wars in the fulfillment of anachronistic goals.

We don’t need to be at war in Syria — nor should we be. And these communications prove, above all, those of us sounding the alarm for a year this addled Syrian conundrum would befall the U.S. had not done so in alarm — rather, in a growing awareness of the unscrupulous tactics possessed by an imperialist State circling the drain.

Father of Famous Aleppo Boy Just Exposed How the US & White Helmets Lied to the World

Covered in dust and bruises with hair disheveled from having survived a blast, the blood beginning to crust over half his face, a seeming placidity — hands anchored on his legs, all-but unmoving — could not mask the stoic trauma in little Omran Daqneesh’s eyes.

Gazing hauntingly from the back of an ambulance in Aleppo in August 2016, Omran’s image snared the heartstrings of the world — even those previously hardened to the hopelessly tangled morass in Syria — transmogrifying into a single human form the suffering of innocent Syrians at the whims of entire nation-states embroiled in proxy war upon war in the name of political squabbles.

But, while the West took up Omran’s cause, Westerners did so under the pretense the child had been bloodied by an airstrike or missile launched by the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or their allies from Russia — his image rekindling the fire of contention propaganda designed to support the United States’ goal of regime change.

But it was a lie — from mass media’s parroted claims the boy had escaped an airstrike within an inch of his life, to bandages eventually wrapped around Omran’s head — virtually none of the narrative stemming from the starkly persistent image bore the weight of truth.

“We did not find out how the incident happened,” Mohamad Kheir Daqneesh, Omran’s father, told reporter Kinana Alloush and others in interviews this week. “I pulled my family members out of debris. Omran was with me, while White Helmets took him away and started taking photo of him.”

Daqneesh, noting the sound of fighter jets or missiles did not precede the blast which ultimately killed Omran’s 10-year-old brother, explained he had to shave the boy’s head and ferret him away from overwhelming media attention — and from rebel fighters and sympathizers who sought perhaps to wrest the symbolic child from the relative safety of his family.

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Journalists allied with al-Nusra Front — variously, Fatah al-Sham or Levant Liberation, an offshoot of al-Qaeda — demanded the father adhere to the narrative Assad was responsible for Russians bombing the neighborhood, and, thus, their suffering and tragic predicament. They even offered sizable sums to sweeten the pot.

He refused — on principle, as well as on the basis of knowledge likely some contrary was true.

In fact, the attempt to wrangle a narrative favorable to the U.S.-led coalition hasn’t ceased — even amid the emergence of the family’s actual plight, pro-Western media outlets like the Guardian and Washington Post maintained speculation and withheld details disputing the original maudlin horror evinced in the August 17, 2016, image of Omran in the ambulance’s orange chair.

Where Alloush and other journalists, interviewing Daqneesh with Omran by his side — now clean cut and hinting smiles — listened intently to the man fed up with misinformation circulating for almost a year, Western corporate media insisted there could be no way to verify whether coercion forced him to speak out.

Mohamad — gasp — supports the rule of Assad.

But where eagerness to paint the Syrian war in the broad strokes of good versus evil might have fabricated the story to the benefit of shared goals possessed by the West and barbarous militants, reality is never so simple.

Nor is it so verily sterile and concrete, even when tinged with hollow tears from a world audience eager to pin blame and continue dropping bombs as usual.

War’s messes cannot be encapsulated so facilely in the resigned, dusty face of a single child — not when thousands of children whose stability, limbs, life, and homeland have been ripped to shreds — but go unnoticed by the same corporate media backing interventionist policy wreaking that havoc in the first place.

Omran, it turns out, suffered only minor injuries — not even severe enough to warrant head bandages, much less a footnote in history as the poster child for why the West must oust Assad — and he left the hospital after receiving first aid to return to whatever remained of their home in Aleppo.

“He only sustained minor injuries, but the militants exaggerated this fact. They said on numerous occasions via their media that he died, until finally admitting that he’s alive. They are not to be trusted,” the elder Daqneesh asserted.

“While I was rescuing my family the militants filmed my kin getting out of the house, in order to use these images for propaganda … I never had any dealings with their organizations and I never accepted their so-called humanitarian aid.”

Months of hiding, dodging further unwanted attention, plagued Daqneesh — until ire at brazen manipulation of his son boiled over into statements with journalists clarifying Assad and the Russians should not bear blame.

Terrorists — some armed, trained, backed, and laughably reclassified by the West and its allies as ‘moderate rebels’ — still aim to depose Assad and dominate Syria. In some places, they do.

And while it would be equally as farcical to sterilize atrocities committed by Syrian and Russian forces, denying Western and American complicity in the horrors besieging civilians belies a pomposity in politicized warring — with children like Omran unknowingly symbolizing two fundamentally differing justifications for its continuance.

Omran isn’t Syria. But because he is Syrian, the ugliness of conflict in the Middle East — stoked by a laundry list of geopolitical, religious, and other conniving agendas — found shameless solace in emblazoning his image on propaganda conveniently supporting each, individually.

And shamelessly so.

If Omran Daqneesh is to be a poster child of this war, then let the five-year-old grace only posters calling for its end — for a return to a life Westerners might not be familiar in its normalcy, but which suited the majority of Syrians.

Until, that is, the time the otherwise insular conflict took on proxy outgrowths and began using traumatized children as pawns.

If you wish only to never see another Omran — less so, his counterparts, who were fortunate enough to escape the additional burden of  the international floodlight, but who suffered worse fates — then war must end. Troops must be delivered back to their families. Death must cease to be a commodification of the need to intervene in affairs of sovereign nations.

Diplomacy, even that not fully in sync with either warring party, must return as a viable alternative to the murder writ large in pro-war arrogance and propaganda.

Otherwise, there will be more Omrans — worse, there will be an interminable list of children lost to war, whose names and faces only their families will mourn.

That, not a situation manipulated to appear as something more, is the true horror of war.

BREAKING: Using Russian Fear as a Distraction, US Military Just Attacked Syrian Govt

Amid mudslinging over the firing of FBI head James Comey and allegations President Trump maintains deep ties to Russia, a U.S.-led coalition aircraft struck a convoy of Syrian government armed forces.

Buzzfeed reporter Mike Giglio tweeted:

“BREAKING: US official confirms to @BuzzFeedNews that the US-led Coalition hit Assad regime forces with air strikes in southern Syria today.”

BREAKING: US official confirms to @BuzzFeedNews that the US-led Coalition hit Assad regime forces with air strikes in southern Syria today

— Mike Giglio (@mike_giglio) May 18, 2017

According to AFP, the coalition fighter bombed the convoy of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in southern Syria near the border with Jordan and Iraq, as it headed to an outpost garrison run by the U.S.-led alliance.

An unnamed and thus unverifiable source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP,

“A convoy going down the road didn’t respond to numerous ways for it to be warned off from getting too close to coalition forces in At-Tanf.

“Then there was finally a strike against the lead portion of that movement.”

Reports say the garrison had been used by the British and American special operations forces to train Syrian rebel fighters — commonly referred to by the U.S. government by the misnomer, “moderate rebels.”

Giglio tweeted several as-yet unsubstantiated details, but posited the U.S. and its allies carried out the airstrike in the interest of protecting their troops and the ostensive training stronghold.

Giglio also noted militia fighters in support of Assad’s regime had been observed in the area where of the bombing.

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“US likely wants to get regime + allies to keep distance from US SF base at Tanf with strikes. But could escalate with myriad forces around.”

US likely wants to get regime + allies to keep distance from US SF base at Tanf with strikes. But could escalate with myriad forces around

— Mike Giglio (@mike_giglio) May 18, 2017

“rebels worried last week that regime forces would get too close to US SF base at Tanf. it seems that happened today, and Coalition struck.”

rebels worried last week that regime forces would get too close to US SF base at Tanf. it seems that happened today, and Coalition struck

— Mike Giglio (@mike_giglio) May 18, 2017

“On Monday, Al-Masdr News reported that Syrian Arab Army soldiers along and militias affiliated with the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units are preparing to recapture the nearby Tanf Border crossing from Daesh [the Islamic State],” Russian state-supported Sputnik reports.

Syrian rebels ostensively feared the close proximity of pro-government forces, Giglio also reports — understandable sentiment for those actively fighting to bring down the regime of Bashar al-Assad, which, while not recognized or condoned by the U.S., is widely considered legitimate.

While the U.S. only quasi-officially entered the conflict in Syria in April, upon the direct but peculiar bombing of an older airfield, ordered by Trump after still unproven allegations Assad had attacked his own people with noxious, deadly chemical weapons.

Fighting the Islamic State has thus far been the stated goal of operations for the U.S.-led, multi-State coalition of forces — but that alliance hasn’t exactly had a perfect record of accuracy, and has indeed struck Assad’s troops before.

“On September 17, 2016,” Sputnik notes, “US-led coalition aircraft carried out four strikes against the Syrian army near the Deir ez-Zor airport, killing 62 soldiers and wounding some 100. The Pentagon said that the airstrike was a mistake and was intended to target Daesh militants, while a number of Syrian officials stated that the attack was intentional. Later, the Pentagon released a report claiming that the US-led coalition’s forces struck the Syrian army in Deir ez-Zor as a result of an ‘unintentional, regrettable error.’”

News of this strike — for which only a paucity of information has been made available thus far — comes right as headlines have exploded in controversy with allegations the U.S. President might have cozied too close to the Russian Federation.

Some outlets surmised the reason Trump fired Comey was to install another head of the Feds less prone to probe further into the president’s associations with Russia. Others proffered that Trump should be charged for sharing classified information on U.S. efforts to fight the Islamic State with several Russian officials.

Most of those reports failed to name officials and sources, and did not include evidence to unassailably confirm their veracity.

As this conflagration continues to be fanned by mainstream media, it would seem the U.S. has no issue going full steam ahead with its contentious aims of regime change in Syria — where it directly opposes Moscow and Russian military support of the Syrian government.

This article will be updated when and if further information becomes available.

VIDEO: Al-Qaeda Leader Praises White Helmets As “Hidden Soldiers Of The Revolution”

As is the case with governmental propaganda, a darker and more insidious truth exists beneath a sugar-coated, simplistic narrative offered the public — and U.S. involvement in the Syrian conflict has provided the worst of the worst — with the supposed humanitarian group, the White Helmets, topping the charts in disinformation.

Ask any Westerner who considers themselves informed in international affairs about the Nobel Peace Prize-nominated, Oscar Award-winning White Helmets, and you’ll likely hear them praise the group’s valiant efforts to save Syrian civilians after attacks by the Islamic State, or errant bombings by the Russian and Syrian governments.

But it’s a lie. And one need look no further than praise of the White Helmets, sung by actual, known terrorists, to see the truth in its naked form.

Because, in actuality, a thick shroud of controversy veils the group — which is notorious among Syrians for haphazard and occasionally dangerous medical practices in the treatment of victims, as well as for aiding terrorists and their enablers.

Far worse, the war-ravaged Syrian populace knows the White Helmets as a creation of the West — one which not only sympathizes with al Qaeda or al Nusra and its affiliates, but which stages rescues for the camera — purely to benefit the U.S.’ goal of ousting President Bashar al-Assad, no matter the repercussions to innocents.

While the corporate media establishment of the United States and its allies proffer the White Helmets as fearless heroes saving civilians from the horrors of terrorism run rampant, in truth, it is the White Helmets’ close affiliation to terrorist groups that has embittered swaths of innocent Syrians to excoriate Western meddling in the affairs of their sovereign nation.

Proof of this allegation has inundated alternative media, thanks in large part to the work of independent journalists who have witnessed the lack of compassion and horrendously flawed medical practices of these ostensively beloved rescuers, for years.

Now, a video created by the leader of Tahrir al-Sham, Abu Jaber — dated March 16, 2017 — backs accusations the White Helmets aren’t at all the humanitarians U.S. propaganda claims.

In fact, Jaber applauds the White Helmets as the “hidden soldiers of our revolution” — thanking them for their actions in support of Tahrir al-Sham — praising the group in the same breath as militants killed in action advancing the terrorists’ cause.

“Second, a message of thanks and gratitude to the hidden soldiers of our revolution,” Jaber states on video, according to an English translation, in what appears to be a prepared statement of gratitude. “On top of the list are the parents of the martyrs and the men of the White Helmets.”

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Whatever doubts instilled by U.S. propaganda remain can be handily shredded by Jaber’s words — and, if not, evidence abounds what this leader of one of the most adaptable terrorist groups in the Middle East says is true.

Al Qaeda and its many variants operate throughout the Middle East, including Syria, not infrequently in parallel actions — if not lockstep — with the U.S.-backed coalition operating in opposition to Syrian government forces.

Where the U.S. once pegged al Qaeda responsible for masterminding the attacks of 9/11, it now quietly admits to working with this terrorist organization to battle one considered the worst — ferociously inhumane fighters of the Islamic State.

Damascus and Moscow seek an end to the conflict by ejecting or crushing the entire web of terrorist groups operating in Syria, while the West — remaining fixated on regime change — instead reluctantly admits to arming and training al Qaeda (al Nusra, Tahrir al-Sham, etc.) militants it once fought against in the region.

They call those fighters ‘moderate rebels’ — the desperate semantics of an interventionist country criticized the world over for inserting itself where it isn’t wanted to advance an agenda of the dying empire. And those moderate terrorists receive support in medical treatment from the White Helmets — to the consternation of non-combatant civilians, seemingly besieged from all sides in this complex morass characterizing the yearslong Syrian conflict.

“In reality the White Helmets is a project created by the UK and USA,” wrote Rick Sterling for Counterpunch in April 2015. “Training of civilians in Turkey has been overseen by former British military officer and current contractor, James Le Mesurier. Promotion of the program is done by ‘The Syria Campaign’ supported by the foundation of billionaire Ayman Asfari. The White Helmets is clearly a public relations project which has received glowing publicity from [Huffington Post] to Nicholas Kristof at the [New York Times]. White Helmets have been heavily promoted by the U.S. Institute of Peace (U.S.IP) whose leader began the press conference by declaring ‘U.S.I.P. has been working for the Syrian Revolution from the beginning.’”

Sterling isn’t by far the sole voice countering the U.S. narratives on the Helmets. Journalist Vanessa Beeley has spent months on and off in Syria, witnessing the group’s nefarious and questionable actions, and has vociferously condemned the White Helmets’ duplicity in support of the West and al Qaeda-affiliated groups, in deference to the wellbeing of Syrian civilians.

“30th April 2017,” Beeley wrote, “I visited the White Helmet centres in Marjeh and Bab Al Nairab, East Aleppo, vacated since the liberation of East Aleppo from Nusra Front led occupation in December 2016. The White Helmets departed with Nusra Front in the buses that evacuated many of them to Idlib. They left behind undeniable evidence of the White Helmet affiliation with and allegiance to Al Qaeda, Syrian civilian testimony and paperwork, graffiti all testify to the White Helmets being Al Qaeda ‘with a facelift.’”

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It would be comforting to believe the lie — to allow the palliative propaganda a group claiming to have humanitarian goals actually does — but that lie endangers the lives of countless innocents, trapped by geographic happenstance in the throes of a war worsened by U.S. interventionism.

But what little comfort is offered in the mendacious claims about the White Helmets, vanishes upon cursory inspection, and — coupled with the testimony of journalists like Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett, and many others, whose consciences don’t allow such deceitful luxury — an obligation of truth wins out.

And when the leader of Tahrir al-Sham terms the West’s golden children of the White Helmets the “hidden soldiers of our revolution,” comfort no longer exists in a neatly-packaged narrative — because truth never is as comfortable or convenient as a fastidiously crafted forgery, when it’s festooned in humanitarian trappings.

Thanks to Trump, 50K US Troops May Soon Be Fighting Side-by-Side With ISIS/Al-Qaeda

If President Trump’s National Security Adviser, Gen. H.R. McMaster has his way, up to 50,000 ground troops will be deployed in Syria; but that would constitute a remarkable escalation in hostilities — particularly after Trump catapulted the U.S. directly into the fraught conflict with the launch of 59 Tomahawk missiles against a Syrian air base in retaliation for an alleged chemical weapons attack on civilians.

It isn’t as if tens of thousands of American troops would be well-received by President Bashar al-Assad, whose ally, Russia — actively fighting an intricate web of terror groups for control of the nation — has been embroiled in a volatile proxy war with the United States.

Antiwar.com’s Jason Ditz explains,

“When President Trump took office, Syria had only about 300-400 US troops present, and while that number has grown significantly (exact figures are no longer provided by the Pentagon), a 50,000 troop deployment would be both shocking and have a huge impact on the region, likely sparking a major backlash from Syria, who has not invited US troops to operate in their territory in the first place.”

A troop deployment of that magnitude could also risk putting Washington in direct conflict with Moscow — feasibly acting as the catalyst for world war. Not to mention, it would be a substantial departure from Trump’s statement to Fox Business News,

“We’re not going into Syria.”

And as Bloomberg reports, McMaster’s strategy hasn’t necessarily been well-received by others in the Trump administration:

“McMaster himself has found resistance to a more robust ground troop presence in Syria. In two meetings since the end of February of Trump’s national security cabinet, known as the principals’ committee, Trump’s top advisers have failed to reach consensus on the Islamic State strategy. The White House and administration officials say Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford and General Joseph Votel, who is in charge of U.S. Central Command, oppose sending more conventional forces into Syria. Meanwhile, White House senior strategist Stephen Bannon has derided McMaster to his colleagues as trying to start a new Iraq War, according to these sources.”

Trump’s first national security adviser, Ret. Lt. General Michael Flynn, had — as many others — sought to avoid increased troop presence in Syria’s complex war, as it would pit U.S. personnel against militants of the Islamic State and iterations of al-Qaeda, as well as the Russian and Syrian militaries.

McMaster’s opponents feel an amplified version of former President Obama’s plans to fight ISIL — airstrikes in conjunction with special forces operations, including the training of local fighters — presents the most efficacious strategy to deal with Syria’s murky morass of hostile entities.

Bloomberg notes top Pentagon brass seek to loosen rules of engagement for special forces, including providing them additional air support, such as attack helicopters, for future operations against the self-proclaimed caliphate.

But that would require reliance on groups with personal agendas in Syria — like Kurdish militias.

Retired four-star U.S. Army General Jack Keane — who is close to McMaster but did not speak for the general — told Bloomberg’s senior national security correspondent, Eli Lake, that while the Kurds have indeed actively fought ISIL, Arab forces have been primarily focused on fighting the Assad regime.

“Our special operations guys believe rightfully so that this was a proven force that could fight,” Keane told Lake of the Kurdish fighters. “While this makes sense tactically, it doesn’t make sense strategically. Those are Arab lands, and the Arabs are not going to put up with Syrian Kurds retaking Arab lands. Whenever you select a military option, you have got to determine what political end state will this support. Regrettably this option puts us back to the drawing board.”

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has expressed marked ambivalence over the U.S. arming and training to Syrian Kurds — whom he believes allied with Turkey’s Kurdish separatist rebels — as those assets could hastily be turned against the Turkish government. And that perception is high-risk for the U.S. military, which requires access to Turkey’s Incirlik air base to fly sorties against the Islamic State in Syria and elsewhere in the region.

Keane feels the U.S. would be better served accepting the assistance of Sunni Arab coalition forces in fighting the Islamic State. But that could further exacerbate tensions with Shi’a fighters, as well as with the Assad regime.

Although two unnamed and unverifiable sources told Lake the 50,000 troops figure is being debated behind closed doors, an explosive report circulated widely online, which cited that figure as 150,000 troops, is wildly exaggerated and not at all legitimate.

Every possible solution to the issue of Syria — where the U.S. seeks to depose Assad, while combating the insidious Islamic State — is now being deliberated.

With Trump’s schizophrenic amplifications of tension peppered with an almost dismissive tone on the threat presented by Assad remaining in power, whether or not McMaster’s desired 50,000 U.S. military personnel will actually be deployed to war-ravaged Syria remains an open — and crucial — question.

Declassified CIA Doc Reveals Plan to Destroy Syria for Oil Pipeline, Predicts Current Crisis

Geostrategically-crucial Syria has been at the center of a decades-long plot by the United States to depose the sovereign government and install one supportive of goals in the Middle East must be revisited — and quickly — before the beating of war drums drowns out the truth of our government’s recently-espoused mission.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly castigated President Bashar al-Assad for ordering a gruesome mass killing of civilians with chemical weapons in Khan Sheikhoun. This accusation, unsubstantiated due to lack of investigation, sparked a bolstering of support for the Syrian regime from both Moscow and Tehran.

Were the account of an ordered chemical weapons attack to prove unassailably true — and Assad isn’t exactly known for being a gentle despot — Trump could have handily earned a congressional green light and perhaps approval from NATO to obliterate Syrian Arab Army forces responsible. Perhaps.

Yet — images of deceased children, women, and men still echoing in shock waves around the planet — the reality show host-turned American President, tellingly, did neither.

Fifty-nine $1.87 million Tomahawk missiles raining down on a Syrian air base not long after the ostensive toxic gassing answered with finality whether Trump would fall in line with a succession of pompously bellicose presidents — as well as whether the neocon political establishment’s longstanding mission to forcibly bend Syria to its will.

“Syria at present has a hammerlock on US interests both in Lebanon and in the Gulf — through closure of Iraq’s pipeline thereby threatening Iraqi internationalization of the war. The US should consider sharply escalating the pressures against Assad through covertly orchestrating simultaneous military threats against Syria from three border states hostile to Syria: Iraq, Israel and Turkey.”

While the preceding bears the names of leaders and nations familiar to current headlines, that assessment, cogently titled, “Bringing Real Muscle to Bear Against Syria,” from former CIA officer Graham Fuller in actuality discusses Syria under Assad’s predecessor — his father, Hafez al-Assad — and is dated September 14, 1983, amid the Iran-Iraq War.

Fuller’s analysis, points out Activist Post’s Brandon Turbeville, evinces Assad as a nuisance hindering American empire’s lust to control vast fossil fuel stores and protect ally, Israel, against multiple threats in the Middle East. Destabilization of Iraq and Iran also features prominently in the intricate U.S. plan to deal with the irritant, elder Assad — who, incidentally, recognized Western ulterior motives for what they were.

As the six-page document continues,

Syria continues to maintain a hammerlock on two key U.S. interests in the Middle East:

— Syrian refusal to withdraw its troops from Lebanon ensures Israeli occupation in the south;

— Syrian closure of the Iraqi pipeline has been a key factor in bringing Iraq to its financial knees, impelling it towards dangerous internationalization of the war in the Gulf.

Diplomatic initiatives to date have had little effect on Assad who has so far correctly calculated the play of forces in the area and concluded that they are only weakly arrayed against him. If the U.S. is to rein in Syria’s spoiling role, it can only do so through the exertion of real muscle which will pose a vital threat to Assad’s position and power.

With Iraq seeking to enjoin support internationally in the war, the U.S. had to scramble to prevent the shutdown of a pipeline — a dilemma Fuller suggests could be alleviated through a change in narrative to present Syria as a more deviant enemy than even Iran. That, alone, would have changed the face of the war bearing the names of the two principal adversaries — Sunni majority, Iraq, and Syria-allied, Shi’a, Iran.

Fuller asserted,

“The US should consider urging Iraq to take the war to the other key source of its predicament: Syria.”

Further, he continued,

“The US should consider sharply escalating the pressures against Assad [Sr.] through covertly orchestrating simultaneous military threats against Syria from three border states hostile to Syria: Iraq, Israel and Turkey. Iraq, perceived to be increasingly desperate in the Gulf war, would undertake limited military (air) operations against Syria with the sole goal of opening the pipeline. Although opening war on a second front against Syria poses considerable risk to Iraq, Syria would also face a two-front war since it is already heavily engaged in the Bekaa, on the Golan and in maintaining control over a hostile and restive population inside Syria.

“Israel would simultaneously raise tensions along Syria’s Lebanon front without actually going to war. Turkey, angered by Syrian support to Armenian terrorism, to Iraqi Kurds on Turkey’s Kurdish border areas and to Turkish terrorists operating out of northern Syria, has often considered launching unilateral military operations against terrorist camps in northern Syria. Virtually all Arab states would have sympathy for Iraq.

“Faced with three belligerent fronts, Assad would probably be forced to abandon his policy of closure of the pipeline. Such a concession would relieve the economic pressure on Iraq, and perhaps force Iran to reconsider bringing the war to an end. It would be a sharpening blow to Syria’s prestige and could effect the equation of forces in Lebanon.”

In context, then-President Ronald Reagan faced pressure both to insert military power in Lebanon — a theater of stated neutrality for the U.S. — and to prohibit actual military assistance in the fraught regional entanglement.

That is, until a suicide bomber decimated a U.S. Marines barracks encamped at an airport in Beirut, killing hundreds — just one month subsequent to the date on Fuller’s Syria action plan.

Micah Zenko, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations — an albeit establishment- and Deep State-connected think tank — in “When America Attacked Syria,” wrote in 2012:

“The October 23, 1983, suicide truck bombing of the Marine barracks at the Beirut International Airport would kill 241 U.S. military personnel; simultaneously, another suicide bomber killed fifty-eight French servicemen of the MNF several kilometers away. (Two weeks later, yet another truck bomb exploded in the Israeli military headquarters in Tyre, killing sixty.) A FBI forensics assessment called the Marine barracks bombing the ‘biggest non-nuclear explosion since World War II.’ According to a Pentagon commission formed to investigate the attack, it was ‘tantamount to an act of war using the medium of terrorism.’ Within weeks, the CIA determined that ‘the bombings…of the United States and French MNF headquarters were carried out by Shia radicals, armed, trained, and directed by Syria and Iran.’”

That the CIA — master meddler in the affairs of sovereign nations — determined fault for the bombings rested with Syria and Iran left both plausibly responsible, with public perception largely following suit.

That a situation eerily similar — in behind-the-scenes string-pulling and long-term U.S. commitment to deposing an Assad from rule in Syria — appears to be playing out nearly three-and-a-half decades later, bellows resoundingly on failures of interventionist foreign policy.

Or, perhaps, its successes.

“Such a threat must be primarily military in nature. At present there are three relatively hostile elements around Syria’s borders: Israel, Iraq and Turkey. Consideration must be given to orchestrating a credible military threat against Syria in order to induce at least some moderate change in its policies,” Fuller explained in the document.

“This paper proposes serious examination of the use of all three states – acting independently – to exert the necessary threat. Use of any one state in isolation cannot create such a credible threat.”

Syria is now a landmine for the Trump administration — as it has been in varying intensity for a lengthy succession of presidents before.

To make proud the neocon warhawks ravenous to rain missiles upon Assad’s forces would duly emblazon the already blood-tinged U.S. government as chief aggressor in a conflict that had been nearing resolution — if not, ultimately, the catalyst for the third world war.

To withdraw militarily and negotiate a reasonable conclusion to the quagmire in Syria, would mean admitting defeat in the removal of Assad — as well as a black eye from the propaganda-suckered who find solace in the Western policy of killing people to teach people killing people is wrong.

In fact, for Trump and his ilk to save face over Syria and prevent the increasing likelihood of direct military conflict with Russia seems an impossibility at this late hour.

In only the past week, incessant drums of war reached a frenetic and dizzying pace — met only by furious uproar over yet another theater of war — despite Syria unofficially having been precisely that for the United States for decades.

Ex-CIA Agent: The Official Story of Syria Govt “Gassing Innocent Civilians is a Sham”

President Donald Trump’s fraught and highly illegal attack on Syria this week in retaliation for an equally disputed chemical ‘attack,’ in which as many as 86 people perished at the alleged hands of the Syrian Arab Army on the literal eve of peace talks is being criticized by experts and cagey politicians at every level of government — including former CIA officer Philip Giraldi.

That Russian forces or those of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would gas to death scores of guiltless civilians is nothing short of a “sham,” according to grumblings within the U.S. Intelligence Community.

Trump managed this injudicious assault with 59 Tomahawk missiles on a sovereign nation without even the pretext of congressional approval, prior to cursory investigation, and in clear violation of domestic and international law, with results expectedly dire — including the deaths of at least nine civilians — four of them, children.

Washington’s neocon war hawks and their counterparts overseas couldn’t heap sanctimonious praise on the now-apparently-interventionist president’s reckless provocation quickly enough — nor could members of various terror groups.

Others weren’t as quick to beat the Petro-Industrial Complex’s war drums — lampooning the reckless endeavor as an unjustified action based on unsubstantiated reports, and likely a war crime.

Worse, the whole affair reeks of the tidiness so oft characterizing a manufactured event — an issue award-winning investigative journalist and Consortiumnews editor, Robert Parry, posits could be the president’s ‘Wag the Dog’ moment.

In short, not everything is as cut and dry as Trump’s War Machine would prefer you believe.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson did not have as strong a backing as implied, when, Thursday night, he claimed the U.S. Intelligence Community had assessed with a “high degree of confidence” Syrian government forces had unleashed a toxic chemical bomb against innocent civilians in Khan Sheikhoun in Syria’s Idlib Governate.

In fact, Parry notes, “a number of intelligence sources have made contradictory assessments, saying the preponderance of evidence suggests that Al Qaeda-affiliated rebels were at fault, either by orchestrating an intentional release of a chemical agent as a provocation or by possessing containers of poison gas that ruptured during a conventional bombing raid.

“One intelligence source told me that the most likely scenario was a staged event by the rebels intended to force Trump to reverse a policy, announced only days earlier, that the U.S. government would no longer seek ‘regime change’ in Syria and would focus on attacking the common enemy, Islamic terror groups that represent the core of the rebel forces.

“The source said the Trump national security team split between the President’s close personal advisers, such as nationalist firebrand Steve Bannon and son-in-law Jared Kushner, on one side and old-line neocons who have regrouped under National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, an Army general who was a protégé of neocon favorite Gen. David Petraeus.”

That split manifested earlier in the removal as national security adviser, Ret. Gen. Michael Flynn, as well as the briefly contentious expulsion of Bannon from the National Security Council — both ousters, Parry says, fomented establishment neocon influence in Trump’s administration.

“Though Bannon and Kushner are often presented as rivals, the source said, they shared the belief that Trump should tell the truth about Syria, revealing the Obama administration’s CIA analysis that a fatal sarin gas attack in 2013 was a ‘false-flag’ operation intended to sucker President Obama into fully joining the Syrian war on the side of the rebels — and the intelligence analysts’ similar beliefs about Tuesday’s incident,” he explains.

Trump’s decision to proceed with a retaliatory operation, the source continued, came in part as a smoothing of ruffled feathers of hawkish Democrats who have for months bristled about possible collusion between the president’s campaign and, vaguely, Russian officials.

Brazenly foregoing congressional approval and the rules of engagement also gleaned long-sought commendation from neocon Republicans previously critical of the president’s foreign policy decisions, including Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham.

The remainder of support for the brazenly aggressive air assault came from a cadre who viewed Obama’s inability to gain congressional approval and failure to respond militarily to an ostensibly similar chemical attack on Ghouta in 2013, as a show of weakness.

Of course, judging by a dearth of evidence and certitude with which the West fingered Assad responsible, Ghouta appeared to constitute a blueprint for the incident at Khan Sheikhoun and all actions in its wake. [Except, this time, Trump jumped the starting gun, raining $110,330,000 in Tomahawks onto an evacuated air base and several innocent victims as ‘collateral damage’ — rather, slightly over $43 million, given as few as 23 missiles could be accounted for in the damaged targets on the ground in Syria.]

“In both cases – 2013 and 2017 – there were strong reasons to doubt Assad’s responsibility,” Parry continues. “In 2013, he had just invited United Nations inspectors into Syria to investigate cases of alleged rebel use of chemical weapons and thus it made no sense that he would launch a sarin attack in the Damascus suburbs, guaranteeing that the U.N. inspectors would be diverted to that case.

“Similarly, now, Assad’s military has gained a decisive advantage over the rebels and he had just scored a major diplomatic victory with the Trump administration’s announcement that the U.S. was no longer seeking ‘regime change’ in Syria. The savvy Assad would know that a chemical weapon attack now would likely result in U.S. retaliation and jeopardize the gains that his military has achieved with Russian and Iranian help.”

And that has been the question posed by independent journalists and outlets still doggedly committed — unlike their corporate media counterparts — to journalism with integrity:

What possible benefit would befall Assad for gassing to death his own people — almost immediately after the U.S. conceded his regime would remain in place?

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For clarity on what likely took place behind the scenes, former CIA officer Philip Giraldi explained for Scott Horton’s Webcast the Intelligence Community did not give the Assad theory much credence — and, in fact, aligned more with claims from Moscow and Damascus a conventional Russian airstrike destroyed a cache of chemical weapons belonging to al-Qaeda, which sent poisonous gases downwind to the village.

“I’m hearing from sources on the ground in the Middle East, people who are intimately familiar with the intelligence that is available who are saying that the essential narrative that we’re all hearing about the Syrian government or the Russians using chemical weapons on innocent civilians is a sham,” Giraldi asserted.

“The intelligence confirms pretty much the account that the Russians have been giving … which is that they hit a warehouse where the rebels – now these are rebels that are, of course, connected with Al Qaeda – where the rebels were storing chemicals of their own and it basically caused an explosion that resulted in the casualties. Apparently the intelligence on this is very clear.”

Subdued tones might have dominated official public statements, but the deviation and distortion of information on the chemical poisoning to pin blame on the Syrian leader ignited such a firestorm of acrimony throughout the Intelligence Community, covert officials were pondering going public.

“People in both the agency [the CIA] and in the military who are aware of the intelligence are freaking out about this because essentially Trump completely misrepresented what he already should have known – but maybe he didn’t – and they’re afraid that this is moving toward a situation that could easily turn into an armed conflict.

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“They are astonished by how this is being played by the administration and by the U.S. media.”

In the 1997 film, Wag the Dog, a widely disfavored president receives assistance from filmmakers who fabricate a humanitarian crisis out of thin air to deflect attention away from a burgeoning scandal. Even a casual observer can see the justification for Parry’s comparison of the film with Trump’s bizarrely aggressive act.

Unfortunately for those already killed and those yet in the path of the U.S.’ humanitarian bombs — and in contrast to crisis actors portrayed in Wag the Dog — the decimation and suffering in Syria is not cinema magic of a movie studio’s green screen.

“In Violation of Int’l Law” — Russia Deploys Cruise Missile Frigate in Response to Syrian Strike

Russian President Vladimir Putin has now responded to the U.S. blasting Al-Shayrat airbase in Syria with over 50 Tomahawk missiles launched from two destroyers Thursday night, as quoted by spokesman Dmitry Peskov, saying he “regards the strikes as aggression against a sovereign nation,” adding the strikes were carried out “in violation of international law, and also under an invented pretext.”

Russian state media reported six casualties — including civilians — and several wounded in the first direct act of aggression by the United States in Syria.

That pretext being a chemical attack against civilians in Khan Sheikhoun in Syria’s Idlib Governate, for which President Donald Trump and other Western leaders pinned squarely on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — a claim which, despite a dearth of evidence and lack of independent investigation, became the impetus for the U.S. to jump head first into a war otherwise drawing to a close.

Peskov avowed “the Syrian army doesn’t have chemical weapons” — and that has been “observed and confirmed by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, a special UN unit.”

Through Peskov, the Russian president deemed the airstrikes a distraction from one of the ‘deadliest attacks on civilians in recent memory,’ in which nearly 300 people were killed in an airstrike in Mosul, Iraq — widely suspected to be the work of the U.S.-led coalition, although an investigation is currently underway.

Worse, the abrupt show of military force prior to unassailable confirmation Assad had been responsible for inexplicably gassing to death civilians veritably decimated already tightly strained relations between the U.S. and Russia.

“This step deals significant damage to US-Russian ties, which are already in a deplorable state,” Peskov asserted.

“The main thing, Putin believes, is that this move [by the U.S.] doesn’t draw us nearer to the end goal in the fight with international terrorism and on the contrary, deals a serious setback to the creation of an international coalition in the fight with it.”

Putin, the spokesman said, accused the U.S. of repeatedly ignoring the use of chemical weapons by terrorists in Syria, which has only served to aggravate the situation.

“Without bothering to investigate anything,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry criticized in a statement, “the US went forward with a demonstration of force, a military confrontation with a country that is fighting international terrorism.

“Obviously, the cruise missile attack was prepared beforehand. Any expert can tell that the decision to strike was made in Washington before the events in Idlib, which were used as a pretext for a demonstration.”

Before Trump green-lighted the astonishing use of force, a number of U.S. officials, analysts, independent journalists, and others conjured the memories of former President George W. Bush and the ramp up to the Iraq War under the premise Saddam Hussein had ferreted away Weapons of Mass Destruction. That claim, of course — doubted by critics at the time — later proved to be an utter fabrication, despite its championing as an excuse for the illegal invasion.

Abominable though the torturous deaths of at least 86 civilians to an as-yet-undetermined chemical agent certainly are, aggressive military actions will not only ensure further killing of innocents, it undoubtedly will worsen Syria’s humanitarian and refugee crises.

“When speaking about the military intervention in Iraq many years after it happened,” Lavrov elaborated, “Tony Blair (who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007) acknowledged that they had misled everybody. Now they did not even bother to provide any facts referring only to photos. They indulged in speculations on children’s photos, on evidence provided by various non-governmental organizations, including the so-called White Helmets, which staged various ‘incidents’ to instigate action against the Syrian government.”

Displaying utmost restraint at the U.S.’ hot-headed reaction, Lavrov insisted Moscow would still demand a thorough investigation of the dubious chemical attack in Idlib. Quoted by TASS news agency, Lavrov lamented,

“It is regrettable that all these causes do more harm to the already damaged relations between Russia and the United States. Hope remains that these provocations will not entail irreversible effects.”

Other top Russian officials were equally adamant U.S. missile strikes would further fray relations and could plunge the Middle East into even worse destruction and chaos — with little, if any, benefit to any of the parties involved.

“It’s a new round of escalation in the Middle East. These ill-judged, irresponsible actions don’t contribute to global security, security in the Middle East,” railed Russian Airborne Troops Colonel Andrei Krasov told state-run RIA, cited by Zero Hedge. “Other military conflicts, an expansion of military conflicts, are entirely possible.”

Russian officials expressed doubt broad international cooperation against terrorism would be possible if the United States continues raining missiles on Syria, as Russian Senator Konstantin Kosachev surmised such a coalition now “bites the dust before it was even born.”

Still others shared concerns with Western critics of the military endeavor — that an already-boiling proxy war between the U.S. and Russia in Syria could explode into active engagement if extreme caution isn’t employed in the coming days.

“The U.S. is being dragged into the war in Syria in the full knowledge that Russia is supporting Syria and our troops are there, which means it’s fraught with direct clashes between Russia and the U.S. and the consequences could be the most serious, even armed clashes and exchanges of strikes,” admonished Russian lawmaker, Mikhail Emelyanov.

Indeed, with the tangible potential for Russian forces to come under fire, unintentionally or otherwise, Moscow suspended the memorandum of understanding on flight safety in Syria with the United States. Originally signed in October 2015, the memorandum sought to prevent blunders as both nations operated independently of one another inside Syria.

Although Washington’s immediate plans remain unclear, the revocation of that agreement gives the Russian military additional options for defending its operations — and possibly those of the Syrian government.

Notably, if portentously, Moscow also deployed the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s frigate, The Admiral Grigorovich — armed with Kalibr cruise missiles — which is slated to arrive in the Mediterranean later today before visiting a logistics base in the Syrian port of Tartus.

Whether or not the Grigorovich remains in place near the Syrian coast after that time will be decided by actions next undertaken by the United States, an unnamed Russian military-diplomatic source told TASS.

RIA reported just 23 of the 59 total Tomahawks fired by the U.S. met their intended targets, though media reports do vary. RIA, cited by Reuters, quoted an unidentified employee of Syria’s Al-Shayrat base, who noted, “All the aircraft on the base have been taken out of action, it’s safe to say they are completely destroyed” — though reports variously dispute that claim, as well.

“The US pretends it doesn’t get obvious things,” the Russian Foreign Ministry gently castigated. “It turned a blind eye on terrorist usage of chemical weapons in Iraq, which Baghdad officially reported. It dismissed documented cases of terrorist chemical warfare usage in Aleppo. All this does is abet international terrorism and bolster it.”

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Perhaps most ironically in the Trump administration’s lustful rush to retaliate is its playing directly into terrorists’ desires — embittering those previously moderate or apathetic to the point radicalizing and fighting back becomes an appealing option.

Blowback.

Provocation of this magnitude, the Foreign Ministry warned, would only lead to an increase in terrorist attacks “with weapons of mass destruction.”

‘Plan-B’ — Obama Paves Way to Give Syrian ‘Moderate Rebels’ Anti-Aircraft Weapons to Fight Russia

President Obama contemplated arming the already controversial ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels weapons to “defend themselves against Russian aircraft and artillery” as his Plan B for Syria when all else failed in the effort to oust Assad — but although this treacherous plan has been effectively shelved, it remains an option for whomever next ascends to the White House.

According to a new report from the Washington Post, Obama’s Plan B has neither been “approved or rejected” in the U.S.’ disintegrating and increasingly complex campaign to depose Syrian President Bashar al Assad — which has, of course, precipitated a perilous proxy war with staunch Syrian ally, Russia.

Skepticism over allowing the CIA to provide various anti-Assad terrorists — euphemistically termed moderate rebels by the U.S. — with “truck-mounted antiaircraft weapons that could help rebel units but would be difficult for a terrorist group to conceal and use against civilian aircraft” apparently forced the plan to be tabled, the Post reports.

In the U.S. program to topple Assad, the CIA has armed and trained defectors from Syrian military known as the Free Syrian Army — whose own defectors went on to form the Islamic State — as well as other terroristic groups virtually indistinguishable from one another except for their political ideologies.

These issues factored into restrictions on weapons the U.S. would provide to their sponsored rebels; but, as the Post explains:

“Rebels chafed at the restriction, complaining that it left them vulnerable to air attack by Assad and, more recently, Russia.”

Plan B was envisaged as a compromise by the CIA.

But the complex state of affairs in Syria has led not only the FSA, but other ‘moderates,’ to ‘radicalize’ — complicating U.S.’ goals and frustrating Russian efforts to purge the embattled nation of terrorists. While the Pentagon’s public goal has duly sought to wrest control from Assad and fight the Islamic State, the CIA program of arming rebels is widely considered counterproductive — if not, perhaps, nefarious.

Plan B, despite potentially devastating repercussions, retains stolid support from top officials, including unsurprisingly CIA Director John Brennan and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter — but has lost favor recently with former proponents, including Secretary of State John Kerry.

Kerry and other skeptics rightly grasp providing heavy artillery to rebels fighting Russia-backed Syrian government forces to down Russian aircraft — which would undoubtedly turn the smoldering U.S. proxy battle into an all-out war with Russia.

Additionally, the Post reports, a growing number of U.S. officials feel the contentious CIA program has only proven to bedevil the ultimate goal of regime change, and, as one unnamed ‘senior official’ noted, CIA units are “not doing any better on the battlefield, they’re up against a more formidable adversary, and they’re increasingly dominated by extremists,” adding, “What has this program become, and how will history record this effort?”

Proponents of the program, however, have not vacillated from the apparent imperative to remove Assad at all costs, as another anonymous official insisted, “The FSA remains the only vehicle to pursue those goals.”

However, as political language intends, grouping the whole of U.S.-assisted fighters under either the label moderate or as the Free Syrian Army belies untold complexities of the intricate situation in war-ravaged nation.

In fact, a number of splinter groups have exploited training and weaponry provided by the CIA to commit atrocities befitting everyone’s enemy, the Islamic State.

In July, for instance, members of U.S.-armed and funded Nour al-Din al-Zinki — officially deemed ‘moderate rebels’ — filmed themselves gleefully beheading a 12-year-old boy. Those ‘rebels’ claimed the child had been a fighter with pro-Syrian government paramilitary faction Liwa al-Quds, which the latter group vehemently denied.

Amnesty International released a scathing report detailing horrific abuses of the Nour al-Din al-Zinki Movement leaving little to differentiate these U.S.-supported fighters from the infamous Islamic State terrorists. Although the State Department — forced to respond to international fury over the video — vowed the gruesome death would be the vehicle to review its support for such laughably-termed moderate rebels, the program continues to this day.

Providing deadlier weapons to such groups for the explicit purpose of downing Russian aircraft could not only facilely spark all-out war, but would assuredly worsen the carnage against Syrian civilians.

“We continue to press for options that will decrease violence in Aleppo and alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people,” an unnamed senior Obama administration official vaguely explained, ignoring the logical contradiction of arming violent groups to stop violence. “We and our partners will continue to provide support to the opposition and Syrian civil society in a manner that advances those objectives.”

Other officials lamented the chaotic entanglement gripping Syria thanks to yet another American program of regime change — and the assistance Assad has received from his powerful ally.

“It’s a fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into. There’s a huge risk here since the Russians entered,” an anonymous former administration official, ‘directly involved’ with the implementation of the program, told the Post. “The lesson out of this is that if you don’t take action early on, you should almost expect the options to get worse and worse and worse.”

Indeed, toppling Assad has embroiled the United States government in worsening relationships with longstanding allies and led all of us down the path toward a third world war. It’s widely believed the White House’s only tenable alternative is to tuck tail and halt the antagonistic Syrian campaign — an option which, though it might prevent all-out war, would be akin to admitting failure.

Shelving Plan B without a distinct decision, the aforementioned former administration official noted, should not be seen as significant.

However, without definitively canning the proposal to arm rebels with anti-aircraft weapons to shoot down Russian jets, Plan B remains a potential option for whomever assumes office in January — and that, given a host of unknowns, could indeed be highly consequential.