Columbia University Professor Gary Sick on the apparent “curtain of silence [that] has been drawn” over the aid being sent by the US and its allies to the Free Syrian Army:
…I look — mostly in vain — for any detailed disclosure of the sources and methods that are making the FSA such a formidable military force…
When opposition forces were battering the US in Iraq, we were treated to regular revelations in the media of Iranian supply of IEDs and other weapons, as well as training and direction. Some of those “exclusives” were based on very flimsy evidence, but that did not prevent them from becoming front page stories and lead items on the evening news, day after day. Even in Syria, we get a regular stream of speculative reports about Iranian support for Assad — money, oil, technical support, intelligence, even, some say, Revolutionary Guards fighting in Syria.
But now that the shoe is on the other foot, and governments friendly to the US are engaged in harassing Assad’s army, we are getting only the vaguest possible references to the description and sources of all that new weaponry, the training of FSA cadres, and how much it is costing to build a new army from scratch.
Last week it was revealed that Turkey has not only been giving shelter to the FSA, but that it has been providing extensive military training as well. US aid also continues to flow along with arms from the Gulf states, despite a growing list of accusations that the rebels have been committing crimes like torture and executions of Assad supporters.
In the Western media, this is called “humanitarian intervention” or “shaping the conflict,” whereas Russia is propping up a dictator and Iran is engaged in a proxy war. Just like how our occupation of Iraq was an exercise in “democracy promotion,” while alleged Iranian aid to Iraqi insurgents was criminal and nefarious proxy terrorism.
