Biting the Turkish hand the feeds you. |
"Thou Shalt Not Tell The Truth"
- Joe Biden is forced to apologize to our Islamist "allies" for pointing out that they were supporting Islamist terrorism.
ISTANBUL — Vice President Joe Biden apologized to the United Arab Emirates Sunday for charging that the oil-rich ally had been supporting al Qaida and other jihadi groups in Syria's internal war, his second apology in as many days to a key participant in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State extremists.
The White House said Biden telephoned Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi to say that his recent remarks “regarding the early stages” of the conflict in Syria “were not meant to imply that the Emirates had facilitated or supported” the Islamic State, al Qaida or other extremist groups in Syria.
But his apology, one day after expressing similar regrets to Turkey, left open whether the Emirates had supported the rise of al Qaida during the early stages of the war in Syria reports McClatchy News.
Biden was answering questions at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government Thursday when he veered off the official talking points to declare, “Our allies in the region were our largest problem” in preventing the spread of al Qaida in Syria.
“The Saudis, the Emiratis; what were they doing?” he said. “They were so determined to take down (Syrian President Bashar) Assad and have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, they poured hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad. Except that the people who were being supplied were (Jabhat) al Nusra and al Qaida, and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.”
The other two countries Biden named were Saudi Arabia, which is about to host the U.S.-funded training of thousands of Syrian rebel fighters, and Qatar, which houses a covert CIA training facility for Syrian rebels.
Biden said Saudi Arabia “has stopped the funding” going to extremists in Syria, and the Qataris “have cut off their support for the most extreme elements of the terrorist organizations.” Neither country has publicly demanded an apology so far.
Although senior U.S. officials have hinted that at least one Gulf country had been supporting Jabhat al Nusra, the Al Qaida-backed militia in Syria, no one had named the countries in a public forum until Biden. His remarks raised a number of questions: what form did the aid take, how long did it continue and what impact did it have on fighting on the ground?
The politicians and their lap-dog media somehow "forget" to ask where ISIS gets their weapons and funding. |
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