While Senator John McCain has called an alleged, but in no way proven, CIA report that Russia “hacked” the U.S. presidential election in favor of Donald Trump a form of warfare, he and his neo-con colleagues are secretly supporting the CIA’s covert operation to provide shoulder-launched missiles to jihadists fighting in the Syrian civil war.
Multiple reports out of the Middle East point to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey transferring man-portable air defense systems or “MANPADS” to Syrian jihadist rebels allied with factions of the Islamic State. The operation to supply MANPADS to the Salafist Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham.
The missiles have been delivered to Syrian jihadist rebels with the sole intent of shooting down Russian Sukhoi SU-34 fighters operating out of Hmeymim Airbase in Latakia, Syria. The Saudi-influenced Central Intelligence Agency director, John Brennan, personally approved the covert operation in order to inflict casualties on the Russian Air Force in Syria and provide relief to jihadist rebels, including Islamic State elements, fighting to defend their enclaves in Aleppo from a joint Syrian-Russian-Lebanese Hezbollah offensive. With fresh weapons and other supplies from Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, the Islamic State has recaptured the ancient city of Palmyra from Syrian forces. The Islamic State’s assault on Palmyra is intended to relieve Syrian army pressure on Aleppo.
Intelligence reports out of Syria are claiming that prior to the Islamic State retaking Palmyra from Syrian and Russian forces, the U.S. launched an information warfare attack against Syrian and Russian satellite and terrestrial radio communications that resulted in Palmyra’s defenses collapsing as jihadist rebels stormed in.
There are no guarantees that the MANPADS now in the hands of jihadists in Syria and also possibly in Iraq will not be used against U.S. and other NATO aircraft or commercial planes flying over regional war zones.
While Russian forces assist Syrian forces in battling the Islamic State, McCain, who met with the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in northern Syria in May 2013, is calling for a strong American response against Russia for the unproven charges of election manipulation. A year after the McCain-Baghdadi meeting, the Arizona senator and his friends in the corporate media called the report of the meeting false, one of the first examples of the “fake news” meme from major purveyors of “fake news,” including The New York Times.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2016 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
