WASHINGTON – It's an obvious question asked by both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, but one the Obama administration is ducking: Why would Syrian rebels want to fight ISIS when they share the same goal of toppling President Bashar al-Assad?
Such skepticism caused 85 Democrats and 71 Republicans to vote against the bill that ultimately passed in the House Wednesday authorizing President Obama's plan to arm and train Syrian rebels to fight ISIS.
The Republicans voting no included some very prominent conservatives, such as Reps. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, Steve Stockman, R-Texas, Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., Justin Amash, R-Mich., Mark Meadows, R-N.C., Michael Burgess, R-Texas, and even moderate Frank Wolf, R-Va.
Democrat Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York asked Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel during a hearing Wednesday, "How do we know the rebels won’t align with ISIS when they have Assad in their sights?"
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Hagel conceded, "There will always be risk in a program like this, but we believe that risk is justified by the imperative of destroying ISIS – and the necessity of having capable partners on the ground in Syria."
Even Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who supports arming Syrian rebels, was skeptical of the administration's plan, asking Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, "You don’t think that the Free Syrian Army is going to fight against Bashar Assad, who has been decimating them? You think that these people you're training will only go fight against ISIS?"
"We can establish objectives that defer that challenge into the future,” said Dempsey.
An equally skeptical Gohmert noted on the House floor Wednesday night, the leadership of the Free Syrian Army, or FSA, has said they are willing to fight and kill alongside the Islamic State, or ISIS, who share their religious beliefs.
In a statement, Gohmert added,"The Islamists that President Obama wants to keep arming have also worked with al Qaeda affiliates in the past and will in the future."
The congressman said he voted against funding because the Syrian rebels "the president wants to continue arming and training have strong ties to the very group the U.S. is supposedly fighting."
Bachmann echoed that sentiment, stating, "Many of the so-called ‘moderate’ rebels have already joined the cause of Islamic jihad, and President Obama has failed to coherently outline how he would prevent American weapons from getting into the hands of our enemies."
Calling the plan a flawed strategy filled with half-measures, she added, "President Obama has asked the U.S. Congress to follow him in a Vietnam-style slow walked response. I will not."
"Either the United States chooses to decisively defeat this brutal evil with all available resources, or we will have to answer the next generation's questions regarding why we failed to defeat the totalitarian evil of our day," she concluded.
As the Senate began to consider the bill Thursday, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., explained he supported airstrikes on ISIS but opposed the president's plan to arm Syrian rebels, "Because we don’t know for sure who the groups all are. Even when we think we do, loyalties shift and groups become amorphous, with alleged moderates lining up with jihadists." He said there are estimates that half of the FSA has defected.
"We prove time and time again we don’t know how to vet their leaders," added Paul, echoing remarks made to WND previously by former CIA operative and current Mideast analyst Clare Lopez.
She told WND, due to political correctness concerns about Islam, intelligence agents do not vet rebels based on their ideology but on their associations and group memberships.
As an example, she described how U.S. special forces were sent to Jordan to train people who turned out to be jihadis, even though it was reported they “vetted everybody.”
“They vetted them and asked, ‘Did you ever belong to al-Qaida?’ and they said ‘Oh, no – not me!’ But did they ever ask them what their ideology was? They’re not allowed to. We’re not allowed to define our enemy, so how can we even identify our enemy? So, we fall into things like this where we actually train future ISIS jihadis, according to the Jordanian security officials.”
To drive home his point that the rebels the U.S. might arm do not necessarily share its goals, Paul quoted Robert Ford, the most recent Ambassador to Syria, who said, “We must understand two vital points going in, the moderate armed opposition’s biggest enemy is not ISIS, it is the Assad regime…moderate forces have and will tactically coordinate with the Al Qaida linked Nusra front on the ground.”
The senator also alluded to the irony that just last year the administration "and its allies on both sides of the aisle wanted the United States to join this war on the side of ISIS, against the Assad regime."
Many lawmakers pointed out, beyond the question of whether rebels the U.S. arms would fight ISIS, is whether those arms would fall into the hands of the jihadis.
Gohmert called the administration "naive" and insisted the "weapons this President has been sending to the 'vetted moderate Free Syrian Army' for over a year continue to end up in the hands of our sworn enemies. "
He said American should eliminate ISIS "without giving our enemies more weapons with which to murder us."
Paul also noted how so-called moderate groups have often sold their weapons or had them seized by the jihadist elements led by ISIS.
"ISIS has grabbed up U.S., Saudi, Qatari weapons by the truckload and we are now forced to fight against our own weapons," he said. "Reports show that the CIA, Saudi Arabia and Jordan have supplied roughly 600 tons of weapons to the militants in Syria in 2013 alone."
Paul mentioned Jane’s Terrorism Center had deduced "the transfer of Quatari arms to targeted groups has the same practical effect as shipping them to Al Nusra, a violent jihadist force."
“We gave them tactics, intelligence and arms,” Lopez noted, referring to the story WND previously reported that the U.S. trained rebels in Jordan in 2012 who ended up joining ISIS.
Gohemert expressed that concern on the House floor Wednesday evening, saying, "One of the big problems when we go in and train, as this President wants to do for Syrians, they learn our tradecraft, they use it against us as they did at Benghazi."
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