credit: file photo/Press TV

Madison Ruppert, Contributor

Activist Post

The recently established Syrian Support Group (SSG), a United States-based pro-Free Syrian Army (FSA) group housed just three blocks away from the White House, is openly showing their support for the terrorist FSA like never before.

The SSG was just established this April as a non-profit and thanks to a special license from the Treasury Department, they can now openly provide the Syrian opposition with funding to purchase heavy weaponry which, according to The New York Times, includes “antiaircraft and antitank missiles.”

The individuals involved in this organization are far from detached from the Obama administration, which is hardly surprising. Writing for the Times, Steven Lee Myers reports that the SSG members “regularly consult with State Department officials, including the American ambassador to Syria, Robert S. Ford, who has been based in Washington since the embassy in Damascus closed in February.”

This specific connection with Ambassador Ford is also far from surprising considering the fact that he has been involved with openly supporting the Syrian opposition, even meeting with rebel leaders in Syria before he was essentially forced to flee back to the United States.

Hilariously, The New York Times attempts to paint a picture of the Obama administration taking a back seat in the crusade against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. They go as far as to claim, “it is tacitly encouraging others to do so [intervene militarily or provide weapons to Syrian rebels], including nations like Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar and, now with the license, a network of Syrian émigrés in the United States and Canada.”

This contradicts the reports quoting Syrian opposition members openly admitting their alliance not only with the U.S., but also with Germany, Britain, and Turkey while wealthy individuals in Qatar and Saudi Arabia are providing funding.

The claim that it is only tacit support is also contradicted by the reports published by the same exact news agency about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) working to help funnel weapons to the rebels.

Interestingly, in the article the members of the SSG interviewed seemed very clear on the fact that they are more than happy to go the military route and, of course, slaughter Syrians in the process (although they avoid addressing that aspect of their campaign).

“If you keep giving people videos and cameras and satellite equipment so they can document how they are getting killed, it won’t stop the killing,” said Louay Sakka, one of SSG’s eight board members, speaking about the aid publicly provided by the U.S.

Hinting at the fact that his group and the other rebels (which al Qaeda has unsurprisingly openly expressed support for) seeks to do nothing short of attack Assad loyalists in the name of their cause, Sakka said, “it’s only the language of force they understand.”

This provides a natural transition to his statement insisting that there is no political or diplomatic solution possible, thus leaving only the options of Libya-style military intervention or the slightly less overt arming and support of the rebels.

“For a long time we’ve been telling them there is no political solution,” said Sakka, referring to officials who have been hoping for a peaceful end to the situation.

Therefore it is no surprise to see renewed calls for a no-fly zone from the Syrian opposition which has been calling for similar actions since last year with reports of plans for a no-fly zone being drawn up by the Arab League and Turkey with U.S. support.

Sakka said that the SSG hopes to raise a whopping $7 million for the FSA terrorists, which one anonymous official hilariously attempted to claim was for undetermined purposes when it is far from uncertain that it will be used for weaponry.

“It’s not for us to determine what the donations are used for,” one anonymous official said to The New York Times.

“It could be for medical supplies,” the anonymous official nonsensically said in an effort to describe what The New York Times called, “a plausible deniability that might not be plausible to all.”

Personally, I would have replaced “to all” with “to anyone who has the ability to read and retain information longer than five minutes.”

In the clearly pro-SSG article, the terrorist support group is painted as an entity bringing together “a diaspora of émigrés with close family, social and cultural ties inside Syria.”

For those who aren’t familiar with these types of groups – almost identical to those which suddenly appeared in the effort to bring about regime change in Libya, which almost immediately brought about a situation even worse than before – they are usually made up of individuals who haven’t even been back to the country for many years.

One of the board members they interviewed is Dr. Naser Danan, a man who described himself as a pediatrician who has “never been involved in a revolution before.” Like so many other individuals calling themselves Syrian holding anti-Assad views in the West, Dr. Danan left Syria a whopping 26 years ago.

In an effort to make the image of the SSG appealing, The New York Times writes, “Like the protesters in Syria, they began by advocating peaceful political change, but as the Syrian government cracked down ever more forcefully, they, too, became more militant, making contacts with the rebel military commands that took shape in Syria’s major cities.”

Yet just a few paragraphs later they reveal the darker truths about this group in writing,

The group became more organized last spring when it formally incorporated, started its Web site and, in May, hired a former NATO political officer, Brian Sayers, as its director of government relations in Washington after finding him through an online employment agency.

That’s right; they just happened to pick up a former NATO political officer as director of government relations and somehow managed to get a license on July 23 from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control to raise money for the terrorist FSA after less than three months.

While the SSG can’t outright ship weapons to the FSA, they can instead simply give the money to the rebels to have them purchase the weapons, likely through connections provided by the admitted extensive Western intelligence network in place in the region.

The SSG isn’t even registered as a lobbyist yet they have already “become a clearinghouse for American lawmakers and administration officials trying to learn more about the loose network of rebels that has gradually coalesced into the Free Syrian Army,” according to The New York Times.

The SSG supposedly created a “proclamation of principles” signed by rebel commanders which “calls for a free, democratic Syria that would protect the rights of Syria’s myriad ethnic and sectarian groups, create rule of law, and seek peace with its neighbors.”

In reality, the Syrian rebels are responsible for a disturbing amount of sectarian violence which quite unfortunately just appears to be on the rise.

The group has not revealed their fund-raising efforts as of yet and the only entity they have to report to is the State Department, which is clearly backing the effort wholeheartedly.

“If the Internal Revenue Service approves the group’s status as a charity, donations to help Syria’s rebels could soon be tax-deductible,” notes The New York Times.

“Without force, tyranny will persist,” Danan said, indicating their deep commitment to bloodshed and violence. “We will advocate with whatever means we can to mobilize the United States and other world powers to support the Syrian people, and not just with mere rhetoric.”

One must wonder if the SSG would agree with the Syrian rebels who seek to hold on to the chemical weapons in Syria. I would hardly be surprised since it is painfully clear that they not only seek to destabilize Syria, likely creating a horrific situation like that in Libya, but also that they intend to engage in violence and nothing but violence in that quest.

Please support our work and help us start to pay contributors by doing your shopping through our Amazon link or check out some must-have products at our store.

This article first appeared at End the Lie.

Madison Ruppert is the Editor and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database End The Lie and has no affiliation with any NGO, political party, economic school, or other organization/cause. He is available for podcast and radio interviews. Madison also now has his own radio show on Orion Talk Radio from 8 pm — 10 pm Pacific, which you can find HERE. If you have questions, comments, or corrections feel free to contact him at [email protected]