Jill Stein - US backs terrorists 'to disrupt a country'
Mon Dec 26, 2016 3:41PM
Former Green
Party presidential candidate Jill Stein speaks at a news conference on
Fifth Avenue across the street from Trump Tower, December 5, 2016 in New
York City. (Photo by AFP)
Former Green Party
presidential candidate Jill Stein has accused Washington of backing
terrorist groups when it serves its interests.
“In
case you didn't know, the United States funds and arms terrorist groups
like Al-Qaeda and ISIS when it needs them to disrupt a country,” Stein
wrote in her Twitter account on Sunday. Stein was a vocal critic of Washington’s policies when she was running for president in the 2016 election cycle.
The
US and some of its regional allies, in particular Saudi Arabia, Qatar
and Turkey, have been arming and funding militant groups fighting the
Syrian government for nearly six years.
Senior
US officials, including President Barack Obama and Secretary of State
John Kerry, have frequently called for the removal of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad.
Units of so-called moderate militants have
been transported out of Syria to train at camps in Turkey, Jordan and
other locations under a $500-million program run by the
Pentagon. However, the vast majority of the militants left the
battlefield or turned over their US-supplied weapons to other groups,
officials have said.
Militants at a training camp in eastern Syria (Reuters file photo)After
repeated setbacks to that program, US officials revamped the initiative
so that only small numbers of carefully-vetted militant "leaders" would
be trained to direct airstrikes in Syria.
US officials admitted
in September that the revised program had also largely failed, having
trained less than 100 additional militants.
President-elect
Donald Trump has blamed Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton for the rise of the Daesh terrorist organization and instability
in the Middle East.
"The
Obama-Clinton foreign policy unleashed ISIS (Daesh) (and) de-stabilized
the Middle East," Trump said in a foreign policy speech in August as a
presidential candidate.
Earlier
this month, a member of Congress acknowledged that the US government
has been involved in supporting terrorists in Syria and unveiled plans
to stop the supplies and training.
US
Senator Bernie Sanders (middle) waits alongside US Representative Tulsi
Gabbard (L), Democrat of Hawaii, to speak during a rally on Capitol
Hill in Washington, DC, November 17, 2016. (Photo by AFP)“We
must prohibit taxpayer dollars from being used to provide
weapons/support to al Qaeda, ISIS & other terrorist groups. Period,”
Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii said in a tweet on December
12.
“We must stand
together and stop our gov from assisting the same terror groups we are
supposedly trying to defeat,” she said in another post the following
day.
According to a
press release issued by her office, Gabbard has introduced the “Stop
Arming Terrorists Act,” which would prohibit the US government from
using American taxpayer dollars to provide funding, weapons, training,
and intelligence support to terrorist groups.
