© Olivier Douliery/MCTWho's the real psycho here?
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday announced $45 million in additional aid for Syrian opposition activists, the latest U.S. push for influence in a civil war that's raged beyond the international community's control.
Clinton announced the new aid package before meeting with visiting Syrian dissidents on the margins of this week's U.N. General Assembly, where world leaders sounded bleaker than ever about the prospects for a negotiated political resolution to the 18-month uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad.
U.S. humanitarian aid for Syria now will total more than $132 million this year, though Syrian rebels are more interested in weapons and military training than in the American promises of more "nonlethal assistance." Of the $45 million pledged Friday, $30 million is earmarked for humanitarian assistance and $15 million for radios, training and other technical support for opposition activists.
The U.S. government has refused to directly arm or fund the so-called Free Syrian Army, a loose confederation of rebel militias, largely out of fear that the assistance would make its way to Islamist extremist groups that have joined the battle to unseat Assad.
U.S. policy is in a "really tough spot," said Joseph Holliday, a Washington-based researcher at the Institute for the Study of War who specializes in the Syrian conflict. While the administration's instincts to withhold direct aid from rebel fighters is understandable, he said, that strategy is backfiring.
"The irony of our fear of supplying Islamist groups is that the others who are arming the opposition - the Saudis, the Qataris, the Turks - are doing just that, providing weapons and ammunition to Islamists," Holliday said. "Our lack of giving support is actually leading to the Islamicization of the opposition."
Comment: For a better idea of what is really going on in Syria please read:
Sott Focus: Syria's Bloody CIA Revolution - A Distraction? by Joe Quinn
Sott Focus: One Man's Suicide Bomber - National Security Building Bomb in Damascus and Bourgas Bus Bomb by Joe Quinn
Sott Focus: Reign of Fire: Meteorites, Wildfires, Planetary Chaos and the Sixth Extinction by Joe Quinn and Niall Bradley
For additional information read:
German intelligence working to bring 'al Qaeda' barbarians to power in Syria
Mossad, Blackwater, CIA Led Operations in Homs
Wikileaks: US-led NATO Troops Operate Inside Syria