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© AFP PhotoMilitants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) riding in a captured vehicle left behind by Iraqi security forces at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province.

Our Strategy Keeps Failing

We've repeatedly noted that giving arms to the "moderate" Syrian rebels is idiotic ... as they'll just end up in the hands of the Islamic State.

Even the CIA told Obama that this strategy wouldn't work.

So we're shocked - shocked! - that one of the biggest "moderate" rebel groups backed and armed by the U.S. has just been wiped out ... and all of their arms and bases taken by ISIS.

The Telegraph reports:
Two of the main rebel groups receiving weapons from the United States to fight both the regime and jihadist groups in Syria have surrendered to al-Qaeda.

The US and its allies were relying on Harakat Hazm and the Syrian Revolutionary Front to become part of a ground force that would attack the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

For the last six months the Hazm movement, and the SRF through them, had been receiving heavy weapons from the US-led coalition, including GRAD rockets and TOW anti-tank missiles.

But on Saturday night Harakat Hazm surrendered military bases and weapons supplies to Jabhat al-Nusra, when the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria stormed villages they controlled in northern Idlib province.

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The development came a day after Jabhat al-Nusra dealt a final blow to the SRF, storming and capturing Deir Sinbal, home town of the group's leader Jamal Marouf.

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"As a movement, the SRF is effectively finished," said Aymen al-Tammimi, a Syria analyst. "Nusra has driven them out of their strongholds of Idlib and Hama."

The collapse of the SRF and attacks on Harakat Hazm have dramatically weakened the presence of moderate rebel fighting groups in Syria, which, after almost four years of conflict is increasingly becoming a battle ground between the Syrian regime and jihadist organisations.

For the United States, the weapons they supplied falling into the hands of al-Qaeda is a realisation of a nightmare.
Why did we get involved in the middle of Syria's civil war, again?

Oh ... that's right. We got involved before the civil war even started ... 65 years ago.


Comment: See also: US Helping ISIS? One Accidental Airdrop vs Billions in Covert Aid
The Washington Post would report that the United States military accidentally dropped by air at least one pallet of weapons and supplies that ended up in the hands of the so-called "Islamic State" or ISIS.

While the US claims it has "accidentally" allowed weapons to fall into the hands of ISIS terrorists, in reality, the US has been arming, funding, and aiding ISIS and its terrorist affiliates either directly or through Saudi, Qatari, Jordanian, or Turkish proxies since at least 2011.
Despite what we hear in the mainstream media, U.S. and their coalition of the guilty are not trying to stop ISIS. ISIS is a proxy army of their own creation, designed to destabilize and rearrange the Middle East and make it look like this:
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© Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters 2006The following map was prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Ralph Peters. It was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June 2006, Peters is a retired colonel of the U.S. National War Academy.
The end game being to control Russia and China so that the U.S. can maintain its hegemony.