US Helping ISIS? One Accidental Airdrop vs Billions in Covert AidTony Cartalucci 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. ISIS Didnt Happen Overnight Far from springing from the dunes of northern Iraq or eastern Syria, the rise of ISIS is the verbatim fulfillment of long-established documented US conspiracy. It is perhaps best summarized by the prophetic 2007 report The Redirection: Is the Administrations new policy benefiting our enemies in the war on terrorism? written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh and published inthe New Yorker. It stated (emphasis added): To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coperated with Saudi Arabias government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda. What is ISIS if not an extremist group that espouses a militant vision of Islam and is sympathetic to Al Qaeda? And surely ISIS is undermining both Iran and Syria, and for that matter Hezbollah in Lebanon and Irans allies in Iraq as well. The rise of extremist groups in the wake of the US-engineered Arab Spring is the story of how these clandestine operations reported on by Hersh reached their pinnacle in the creation of ISIS. The US State Department through its global network of foreign subversion funded and directed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and a myriad of faux-NGOs, triggered a coordinated uprising across the Middle East. Protesters served as a smoke screen behind which heavily armed militants began campaigns of violence against the security forces of the respective nations targeted for destabilization. Violence in Egypt went largely unreported because of the speed of which the government collapsed and confrontations ceased. However, in nations like Libya and Syria where governments remained resolute, the violence continued to escalate. While the United States attempted to feign ignorance, surprise, and even displeasure with the Arab Spring, it would soon openly align itself with each and every opposition group across the Middle East. In Libya, US Senator John McCains visit to Benghazi, Libya would be the political manifestation of military, financial, and diplomatic aid being rendered to militants fighting against the government of Muammar Qaddafi. These fighters, it would turn out, were not pro-democracy rebels, but rather seasoned militants of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an official Al Qaeda franchise in North Africa. One of their leaders,Abdelhakim Belhadj would eventually find himself in power in Tripoli after the collapse of the Libyan government, and have his photograph taken with Senator McCain. After the fall of Libya, Al Qaeda and its affiliates would take their fighters and their NATO-supplied weapons and travel to fight in Syria. They would enter the country through NATO-member Turkey. While the US has repeatedly referred to the militants fighting the government and people of Syria as moderates, the vast majority of these fighters are sectarian extremists, many of whom are not even Syrian. And while the United States and its allies attempt to claim the rise of ISIS is recent, the many terrorist organizations it is a consolidation of where involved in Syrias fighting since it began in 2011. The US State Department itself would admit that Al Qaedas Syrian franchise, Jabhat al-Nusra (an offshoot of ISIS), was among the most prominent armed militant groups fighting the Syrian government, beginning in 2011 onward. The US State Departments official press statement titled, Terrorist Designations of the al-Nusrah Front as an Alias for al-Qaida in Iraq, stated explicitly that: Since November 2011, al-Nusrah Front has claimed nearly 600 attacks ranging from more than 40 suicide attacks to small arms and improvised explosive device operations in major city centers including Damascus, Aleppo, Hamah, Dara, Homs, Idlib, and Dayr al-Zawr. During these attacks numerous innocent Syrians have been killed. Billions in Weapons, Cash, and Equipment It is clear that Al Qaeda was virtually handed the nation of Libya by NATO intentionally. It is also clear that Al Qaeda was quickly mobilized to then push into Syria and repeat NATOs success, this time by toppling Damascus. The plan as it was imagined was to topple Damascus quickly enough so that the general public never found out who was truly fighting in the ranks of Americas proxy forces. This, because of the Syrian peoples resolution, didnt happen. From 2011 onward, the United States and its allies both European and regionally, would supply terrorists fighting the government of Syria billions in cash, weapons, equipment, and even vehicles. Story after story in the Western press admitted this, but always with the caveat that the aid was going to so-called moderates. For three years these moderates received the combined aid from the United States, United Kingdom, members of the European Union, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Jordan. In the Telegraphs 2013 article titled, US and Europe in major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels through Zagreb, it is reported: 3,000 tons of weapons dating back to the former Yugoslavia have been sent in 75 planeloads from Zagreb airport to the rebels, largely via Jordan since November. The shipments were allegedly paid for by Saudi Arabia at the bidding of the United States, with assistance on supplying the weapons organised through Turkey and Jordan, Syrias neighbours. But the report added that as well as from Croatia, weapons came from several other European countries including Britain, without specifying if they were British-supplied or British-procured arms. British military advisers however are known to be operating in countries bordering Syria alongside French and Americans, offering training to rebel leaders and former Syrian army officers. The Americans are also believed to be providing training on securing chemical weapons sites inside Syria. Additionally, The New York Times in its article, Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With C.I.A. Aid, admits that: With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syrias opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders. The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, and, to a lesser degree, at other Turkish and Jordanian airports. The US State Department had also announced it was sending hundreds of millions of dollars more in aid, equipment and even armored vehicles to militants operating in Syria, along with demands of its allies to match the funding to reach a goal of over a billion dollars. The NYT would report in their article, Kerry Says U.S. Will Double Aid to Rebels in Syria, that: With the pledge of fresh aid, the total amount of nonlethal assistance from the United States to the coalition and civic groups inside the country is $250 million. During the meeting here, Mr. Kerry urged other nations to step up their assistance, with the objective of providing $1 billion in international aid. The US has also admitted that it was officially arming and equipping terrorists inside of Syria. The Washington Posts article, U.S. weapons reaching Syrian rebels, reported: The CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration, according to U.S. officials and Syrian figures. The shipments began streaming into the country over the past two weeks, along with separate deliveries by the State Department of vehicles and other gear a flow of material that marks a major escalation of the U.S. role in Syrias civil war. Recently, when the US State Department resumed sending non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels, the delivery list included 43 Toyota trucks. Hiluxes were on the Free Syrian Armys wish list. Oubai Shahbander, a Washington-based advisor to the Syrian National Coalition, is a fan of the truck. The question is, if billions in Saudi, Qatari, Jordanian, Turkish, British and American aid has been sent to moderates, who has been funding, arming, and equipping ISIS even more? Americas Narrative Beggars Belief So many resources does ISIS have at its disposal, that it is not only supposedly able to displace the so-called moderates in Syria, but has the ability to simultaneously fight the combined military might of Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq not to mention threaten the national security of Russia and China and so we are meant to believe carry out a global campaign of terror against Western targets from Canada and the United States, across Europe, and all the way to far-flung Australia. It is a narrative that beggars belief. The simplest explanation of course, is that there never were any moderates, and that the United States and its allies, precisely as renowned journalist Seymour Hersh warned in 2007, went about raising a regional army of sectarian terrorists to fight an unprecedented proxy war with the predictable outcome being an orgy of genocide and atrocities also as warned by Hersh in his prophetic article. In fact, Hershs report would also state: Robert Baer, a former longtime C.I.A. agent in Lebanon, has been a severe critic of Hezbollah and has warned of its links to Iranian-sponsored terrorism. But now, he told me, weve got Sunni Arabs preparing for cataclysmic conflict, and we will need somebody to protect the Christians in Lebanon. It used to be the French and the United States who would do it, and now its going to be Nasrallah and the Shiites. What if not acataclysmic conflict, could ISIS current regional campaign be described as? And hasnt it been Lebanese, Syrian, Iranian, and Iraqi Shiaa, along with many secular and enlightened Sunnis, who have come to the aid of those targeted by ISIS? The evidence is overwhelming. When considering US support for terrorists and extremists in places like Afghanistan in the 1980s or even as recently as today with US support ofMujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), it would be difficult to believe the US was not involved in raising and directing a proxy army against multiple regimes it openly seeks to supplant. Ultimately, whether one pallet drifted into ISIS hands by accident in a recent airdrop is a moot point. Billions in cash, weapons, equipment, and vehicles have already been intentionally supplied to the many groups that ISIS represents, as planned as early as 2007. ISIS is the purposeful creation of the United States in its pursuit of regional hegemony in the Middle East, and ISIS atrocities were predicted long before the first shots were fired in 2011 in the Syrian conflict, long before the term Islamic State went mainstream. Tony Cartaluccis articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at Read other contributed articles by Tony Cartalucci here. 