Sowing the Seeds of Victory

[prole]

This strategy is brilliant! I wonder why they haven't thought of it before.

New US covert operations helping Sunni Muslim radicals

 

Hersh said US clandestine operations in Iran, Lebanon and

Syria aim at strengthening Saudi-supported Sunni Islam groups and weakening Iran-backed Shiites.

...

The operations under the new tack have been guided by Vice President

Dick Cheney and rely heavily on Saudi Arabia's national security advisor Prince Bandar bin Sultan, according to the report.

 

However, Hersh said, "a by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al-Qaeda."

 

"The 'redirection,' as some inside the White House call the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims."

 

Some US aid distributed to Sunni groups in Lebanon falls into the hands of radical groups, US, European and Arab officials told Hersh, who named

Fatah al-Islam, based in a refugee camp in northern Lebanon, and Asbat al-Answar in a Palestinian refugee camp in the country as beneficiaries.

 

The article also suggested the US policy was benefiting the radical Sunni Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, and that influential Lebanese politician Walid Jumblatt had encouraged US support for the group in a meeting late last year with Cheney.

 

But unnamed officials told Hersh that the approach was dangerous, enhancing radical groups which also consider the United States an enemy.

 

"We're spreading the money around as much as we can," a former senior intelligence official said.

 

"In this process, we're financing a lot of bad guys with some serious potential unintended consequences. ... It's a very high-risk venture."