U.S. keeps funding terrorists: ISIS just captured weapons and bases from the mythical 'moderate rebels'

© AFP Photo

Militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) riding in a captured vehicle left behind by Iraqi security forces at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province.

Our Strategy Keeps Failing

We've repeatedly noted that giving arms to the "moderate" Syrian rebels is idiotic ... as they'll just end up in the hands of the Islamic State.

Even the CIA told Obama that this strategy wouldn't work.

So we're shocked - shocked! - that one of the biggest "moderate" rebel groups backed and armed by the U.S. has just been wiped out ... and all of their arms and bases taken by ISIS.

reports:

Two of the main rebel groups receiving weapons from the United States to fight both the regime and jihadist groups in Syria have surrendered to al-Qaeda.

The US and its allies were relying on Harakat Hazm and the Syrian Revolutionary Front to become part of a ground force that would attack the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

For the last six months the Hazm movement, and the SRF through them, had been receiving heavy weapons from the US-led coalition, including GRAD rockets and TOW anti-tank missiles.

But on Saturday night Harakat Hazm surrendered military bases and weapons supplies to Jabhat al-Nusra, when the al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria stormed villages they controlled in northern Idlib province.

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The development came a day after Jabhat al-Nusra dealt a final blow to the SRF, storming and capturing Deir Sinbal, home town of the group's leader Jamal Marouf.

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"As a movement, the SRF is effectively finished," said Aymen al-Tammimi, a Syria analyst. "Nusra has driven them out of their strongholds of Idlib and Hama."

The collapse of the SRF and attacks on Harakat Hazm have dramatically weakened the presence of moderate rebel fighting groups in Syria, which, after almost four years of conflict is increasingly becoming a battle ground between the Syrian regime and jihadist organisations.

For the United States, the weapons they supplied falling into the hands of al-Qaeda is a realisation of a nightmare.

Why did we get involved in the middle of Syria's civil war, again?

Oh ... that's right. We got involved before the civil war even started ... 65 years ago.