The video link above and article below I found here at Democracy Now Prince Bandar is the guy in charge so to speak for the FSA ISIS and Nusra Front. Turkey is perhaps the second most involved even allowing ISIS to use their hospitals in Turkey free of charge.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud — Saudi’s former ambassador to the United States — is leading the effort to prop up the Syrian rebels. Intelligence agents from Saudi Arabia, the United States, Jordan and other allied states are working at a secret joint operations center in Jordan to train and arm hand-picked Syrian rebels. The Journal also reports Prince Bandar has been jetting from covert command centers near the Syrian front lines to the Élysée Palace in Paris and the Kremlin in Moscow, seeking to undermine the Assad regime. “Really what he’s doing is he’s reprising a role that he played in the 1980s when he worked with the Reagan administration to arrange money and arms for mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan and also worked with the CIA in Nicaragua to support the Contras,” says Wall Street Journal reporter Adam Entous. “So in many ways this is a very familiar position for Prince Bandar, and it’s amazing to see the extent to which veterans of the CIA were excited to see him come back because, in the words of a diplomat who knows Bandar, he brings the Arabic term wasta, which means under-the-table clout. You know his checks are not going to bounce and that he’ll be able to deliver the money from the Saudis.”
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: At the G-20 Summit in Saint Petersburg, Russian and China officials, as well as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, are urging the United States not to bomb Syria in response to last month’s chemical weapons attack. The U.N.’s Ban Ki-moon said, quote, “Let us remember: Every day that we lose is a day when scores of innocent civilians die. There is no military solution.” Ban Ki-moon has repeatedly said a U.S. strike without authorization from the U.N. Security Council would be illegal. But on Thursday the Obama administration declared there is, quote, “no viable path forward” in the U.N. Security Council on Syria. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power has accused Russia of holding the U.N. Security Council hostage.
SAMANTHA POWER: I was present in the meeting where the U.K. laid down the resolution. And everything in that meeting, in word and in body language, suggests that that resolution has no prospect of being adopted by Russia, in particular. And our view—again, our considered view, after months of efforts on chemical weapons and after two-and-a-half years of efforts on Geneva, on the humanitarian situation, is that there is no viable path forward in the Security Council.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power.
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