{"id":77321,"date":"2016-08-08T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2016-08-08T11:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=77321"},"modified":"2016-08-06T18:28:48","modified_gmt":"2016-08-06T17:28:48","slug":"state-dept-excuses-syria-rebel-group-over-terror-attacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/08\/state-dept-excuses-syria-rebel-group-over-terror-attacks\/","title":{"rendered":"State Dept Excuses Syria Rebel Group over Terror Attacks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Insists ‘One Incident Here and There’ Doesn’t Make Them Terrorists<\/em><\/p>\n

The US policy of arming \u201cmoderate\u201d rebel factions in Syria has a lot of problems, but none bigger than the Nour al-Din al-Zinki, a Free Syrian Army (FSA) linked group that\u2019s been getting US aid for quite some time, and also grabbing headlines for a series of incidents.<\/p>\n

In early July, an Amnesty International report <\/a>named them as one of several US-backed group involved in torture and summary executions. Just two weeks later, the group\u2019s social media accounts showed fighters beheading a young Palestinian boy described as \u201can Assad soldier.<\/a>\u201d Now, Russia is suggesting this same group was responsible <\/a>for a chemical weapons attack this week in Aleppo.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a lot of bad publicity for a matter of a few weeks, and is starting to come up in State Department briefings, though spokesman Mark Toner downplayed the incidents, or the possibility<\/a> that the US would stop arming Nour al-Din al-Zinki just because they beheaded a child and used chemical weapons.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst of all, there\u2019s a lot of betting of the Syrian moderate opposition that has already taken place, and it\u2019s not just by the US,\u201d Toner insisted, adding that \u201cone incident here and there would not necessarily make you a terrorist group<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Toner said that didn\u2019t mean the US condoned the beheading or the chemical attack, but that the US focus was on backing \u201cthe moderate opposition,\u201d and differentiating Nour al-Din al-Zinki from other groups like ISIS and al-Qaaeda\u2019s Nusra Front, because those groups have aspirations to attack not just in Syria, but also against the West.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 antiwar.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

State Department spokesman Mark Toner downplayed the incidents, or the possibility that the US would stop arming Nour al-Din al-Zinki just because they beheaded a child and used chemical weapons. Insists ‘One Incident Here and There’ Doesn’t Make Them Terrorists’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-syria-in-context"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77321\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}