The following memo
documents the illegal gun-running by the Obama Administration to Syria's
al-Qaeda-led insurgency, including weapons from Benghazi, Libya
- gun-running which was at the center of the terrorist assault on the US
Ambassador and CIA officers on 9/11/2012. This memo has been circulated to all
members of Congress and to governments internationally. Please circulate it
widely. Mike Billington
PRESS
RELEASE
MEMO TO THE U.S. CONGRESS ON OBAMA GUN-RUNNING TO SYRIA:
It's Already Happening
by William F. Wertz, Jr.
July 1,
2013 (EIRNS)—This release was issued today by the Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee
(LPAC).
June
29—Three recent articles published by Reuters (June 18) and the New York
Times (June 22 and June 29) now confirm what LaRouche PAC has asserted for
months: Contrary to law and without authorization, the Obama Administration has
been running guns from Benghazi to Syria, starting several months prior to the
terrorist attack on the U.S. mission and CIA annex on Sept. 11,
2012.
The guns
were being run, and continue to be run, by a cut-out of the February 17th
Brigade, a "former" member by the name of Abdul Basit Haroun. Haroun is a close
associate of the head of the February 17th Brigade Ismael Al-Sallabi and the
commander of the February 17th Brigade Fawzi Bukatef, both of whom are quoted in
the first two of above-cited articles in defense of Haroun's
gun-running.
The
February 17th Brigade, founded by the Emir of the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Libyan
Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), Abdelhakim Belhadj, is the militia that was hired
by the U.S. to protect the mission in Benghazi. When the attack occurred the
February 17th Brigade was nowhere to be found.
The most
recent New York Times article confirms that Qatar has been shipping
weapons to Syria since 2011, including at least one shipment of shoulder-fired
anti-aircraft missiles (MANPADS) from Libya.
Prior to
these articles, there was already an abundance of evidence strongly suggesting
that the Obama administration,under the auspices of John Brennan, had been
running guns to the Syrian opposition from Benghazi since at since 2011. We
provide that evidence below.
Following
President Obama's June 16 announcement of his decision to openly provide weapons
to the Syrian opposition, several bills have been submitted in the Congress to
prevent him from doing so, arguing that such a decision requires the approval of
Congress in accordance with the War Powers Resolution and the U.S. Constitution.
Legislation introduced by Rep. Walter Jones threatens that to provide weapons
thus is an impeachable offense. It has also been reported that a number of
Congressional committees have rejected proposals by the Administration to fund
the arming of the Syrian opposition with funds already allocated for
intelligence purposes.
Yet President
Obama has already been providing weapons to the Syrian opposition, including
weapons from Libya, in collusion with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the U.A.E., Turkey,
and Jordan for over a year. In doing so, he has already committed an impeachable
offense in violating the U.S. Constitution. And in the case of weapons shipped
to Libya, and from Libya to Syria, he has violated the UN arms
embargo.
As perhaps
even John Kerry will recall, during the 1980s, when the U.S. Congress cut off
funding to the Contras in Nicaragua, Vice President Bush prevailed upon his good
friend Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan to secretly fund the Contras. This is the
same Prince Bandar who funded the first two 9/11 hijackers to arrive in the U.S.
And it is the same Prince Bandar, now Director of Intelligence in Saudi Arabia,
who has been arming al-Qaeda in Syria.
Obama and his
current CIA Director, John Brennan, have been using that same Iran-Contra
method, first to illegally arm the al-Qaeda affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting
Group in Libya, headed by Abdelhakim Belhadj, and then to arm the
al-Qaeda-dominated opposition in Syria. As the authors of the book Benghazi:
The Definitive Report point out, "From Oliver North to John Brennan, this
is just the way that the system works regardless of the administration. The dead
bodies they leave in their wake ... are, at the end of the day, just collateral
damage in a war waged by those with political ambitions."
The Evidence of Obama's Gunrunning
On March 7,
2011, the London Independent reported that Obama asked Saudi Arabia to
supply arms to the Libyan opposition. He did this despite the fact that
the UN Security Council had unanimously imposed an arms embargo to and from
Libya on Feb. 26, 2011.
In addition,
in the Spring of 2011, Obama approved the provision of weapons by Qatar and the
U.A.E. to the Libyan opposition, according to the New York Times (Dec.
5, 2012). Those weapons did not go to the Libyan Transitional National Council
(TNC), but directly to the LIFG, according to an Oct. 17, 2011 Wall Street
Journal article.
The UN Panel
of Experts confirmed that Qatar and the U.A.E. violated the UN arms embargo, in
reports to the President of the Security Council on March 20, 2012, Feb. 15,
2013, and April 9, 2013.
In respect to
Qatar, the UN report states that despite that country's denials, "the Panel
stands by its findings that Qatar supplied arms and ammunition to the opposition
during the uprising in breach of the arms embargo." The report also points to
the collusion of NATO in violating the UN-imposed no-fly zone and arms embargo.
Citing flights organized by the U.A.E., the report states that the flights
"received deconfliction numbers from NATO, the existence of the no-fly zone and
the arms embargo imposed by the Security Council in resolutions 1970 (2011) and
1973 (2011) notwithstanding."
The report
confirms that, since the overthrow of Qaddafi, "The Syrian Arab Republic has
presented a prominent destination for Libyan fighters. A number of them have
joined brigades as individuals or through networks to support the Syrian
opposition." ... [M]ilitary mat,riel has also been sent out from Libya to the
Syrian Arab Republic through networks and routes passing through either Turkey
or northern Lebanon.... Transfers of military mat,riel have been organized from
various locations in Libya, including Misrata and Benghazi. The significant size
of some shipments and the logistics involved suggest that representatives of the
Libyan local authorities might have at least been aware of the transfers, if not
actually directly involved."
During the
same month that Qaddafi was assassinated, October 2011, according to the
Daily Telegraph and other sources, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the head of the
Libyan TNC, and Burhan Ghalioun, the head of the Syrian National Council,
reached an agreement for military support to the Syrian opposition from Libya.
The Emir of the LIFG, Abdelhakim Belhadj, then traveled to Turkey in November
2011 to meet with the Syrian Free Army to provide training and
weapons.
That same
month, according to the website Albawaba.com and the truthseeker.co.uk, 600 LIFG
terrorists went to Syria to commence military training and operations. They were
led by Mahdi al-Harati, deputy commander of the Tripoli Military Council under
Belhadj. Then, according to Ahmed Manai, President of the Tunisian Institute of
Internatonal Relations, and a member of the Committee on Arab Observers in
Syria, on Dec. 11, 2011, an agreement was signed in Tripoli among Jalil,
Belhadj, Rashid al-Ghannushi (head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Tunisia), Qatari
Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hamad Jabber bin Jassim al-Thani, and the
number two of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, to provide weapons and fighters
to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Stevens Secures MANPADS; Brennan Exports Them
According to
Benghazi: The Definitive Report, by Brandon Webb and Jack Murphy (New
York: William Morrow, February 2013), the operation was run by now-CIA Director
John Brennan outside of the traditional command structure, with Obama's
approval.
The book
reports that the United States had been facilitating, or, at the very least
allowing, large weapons transfers from Libya to rebel fighters in Syria. The
authors maintain that this did not fall under the purview of a Foreign Services
officer in the State Department, such as Ambassador Stevens, but rather,
"Stevens likely helped consolidate as many weapons as possible after the war to
safeguard them, at which point Brennan exported them overseas to start another
conflict."
On Feb. 2,
2012, Andrew J. Shapiro, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of
Political-Military Affairs, said in a speech that the United States was engaged
in Libya in the most extensive effort to combat the proliferation of
man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) in U.S. history. Libya had acquired
20,000 MANPADS, and, according to Shapiro, only 5,000 could be accounted for as
of that date. He further reported that many of the weapons were taken by
militias, and that many of the militias remain reluctant to relinquish them.
Furthermore, he said that "we cannot rule out that some weapons may have leaked
out of Libya."
In August
2011, the LIFG's Belhadj led the takeover of Tripoli, thanks to the backing of
Qatar, and became the commander of the Tripoli Military Council, in charge of
coordinating defense on a national level, under the TNC. On Sept. 4, 2011, he
was appointed to the Supreme Security Council. One week after he was appointed
to command the Tripoli Military Council, Belhadj (founder of the February 17th
Brigade), Ismael al-Sallabi (head of the February 17th Brigade), and TNC head
Jalil went to Qatar, where they met with the financiers of the revolution and
NATO officials, according to Kronos Advisory, LLC.
On Sept. 27,
2011, ABC News reported that Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch had taken
pictures in Libya of pickup truckloads of missiles being carted off by the Libya
opposition. He said: "I myself could have removed several hundred if I wanted
to, and people can literally drive up with pickup trucks or even 18 wheelers and
take away whatever they want. Every time I arrive at one of these weapons
facilities, the first thing we notice going missing is the surface-to-air
missiles." Richard Clark, former White House counterterrorism advisor and now a
consultant to ABC News, said, "I think the probability of al-Qaeda being able to
smuggle some of the Stinger-like missiles out of Libya is probably pretty
high."
UN Panel of Experts Documents Two Shipments
On April 27,
2012, according to the UN Panel of Experts report, Lebanese authorities seized a
shipment of arms and ammunition destined for the opposition forces in the Syrian
Arab Republic. The Panel inspected the shipment and concluded that "the shipment
consisted of Libyan arms and ammunition that were transferred to the Luftfallah
II in breach of the arms embargo." The shipment included "SA-24 short range
surface-to-air missiles and SA-7b manportable air defense systems, anti-tank
guided missiles," etc.
Yet already
on Sept. 14, 2012, three days after Stevens was killed, the Times of
London reported that a Libyan ship carrying weapons, including SAM-73
surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) for
the Syrian opposition, had docked in Turkey. The UN has confirmed that the ship
was the al-Entisar. It sailed from Benghazi to Iskenderun, Turkey,
where it docked on Aug. 25, 2012, returning to Benghazi on Sept. 3.
Both of these
documented shipments to Syria from Libya, and undoubtedly others, occurred after
Obama reportedly signed a secret order authorizing the CIA to help coordinate
the shipment of weapons by Saudi Arabia and Qatar to the Syrian opposition (See
below).
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