{"id":21681,"date":"2013-09-12T09:47:59","date_gmt":"2013-09-12T17:47:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=21681"},"modified":"2013-09-12T09:47:59","modified_gmt":"2013-09-12T17:47:59","slug":"justin-amash-govt-is-breaking-law-by-sending-weapons-to-opposition-forces-in-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/12\/justin-amash-govt-is-breaking-law-by-sending-weapons-to-opposition-forces-in-syria\/","title":{"rendered":"Justin Amash: &#8216;Gov&#8217;t Is Breaking Law&#8217; By Sending &#8216;Weapons to Opposition Forces in Syria&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-20768\" alt=\"247502_210238992348848_6627830_n\" src=\"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/247502_210238992348848_6627830_n-e1374506443403.jpg\" width=\"580\" height=\"387\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, the <em>Washington Post<\/em> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/cia-begins-weapons-delivery-to-syrian-rebels\/2013\/09\/11\/9fcf2ed8-1b0c-11e3-a628-7e6dde8f889d_story.html\">reported<\/a> that &#8220;the CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration, according to U.S. officials and Syrian figures.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The shipments,&#8221; the article continued, &#8220;began streaming into the country over the past two weeks, along with separate deliveries by the State Department of vehicles and other gear \u2014 a flow of material that marks a major escalation of the U.S. role in Syria\u2019s civil war.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Today, Republican Representative Justin Amash, who opposes U.S. intervention in Syria, tweeted the following:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Under <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/NDAA?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#NDAA<\/a>, you&#39;d be indefinitely detained w\/o charge or trial if you sent weapons to opposition forces in <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Syria?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#Syria<\/a>. Gov&#39;t is breaking law.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Justin Amash (@justinamash) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/justinamash\/status\/378204597283995649?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 12, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>I take it Amash is referring to the clause of the USA PATRIOT Act which prohibits giving material support to groups designated by the United States as terrorists. In <em><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Holder_v._Humanitarian_Law_Project\">Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>the court found that\u00a0\u201ctraining,\u201d \u201cexpert advice or assistance,\u201d \u201cservice,\u201d and \u201cpersonnel,&#8221; all qualified as material assistance.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, the U.S. State Department officially designated the Syrian rebels&#8217; foremost fighting group, Jabhat al-Nusra, a terrorist organization.\u00a0The U.S. has maintained all along that they are employing a &#8220;vetting process&#8221; to make sure all the material support they send to Syria&#8217;s rebels doesn&#8217;t go to the bad guys. But U.S. officials\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/national-security\/in-syria-conflict-us-struggles-to-fill-intelligence-gaps\/2012\/07\/23\/gJQAW8DG5W_story.html\">told<\/a>\u00a0the\u00a0<em>Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0last year that the CIA knew very little about who was receiving U.S. support, nor could they control exactly where it ended up.\u00a0<em>The<\/em>\u00a0<em>New York Times\u00a0<\/em>also\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/07\/22\/world\/middleeast\/us-to-focus-on-forcibly-toppling-syrian-government.html?_r=2&amp;pagewanted=all\">reported<\/a>\u00a0that\u00a0the Obama administration has been \u201cincreasing aid to the rebels\u201d even though \u201cwe don\u2019t really know\u201d who is receiving it.<\/p>\n<p>More troubling, the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>\u00a0published\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/10\/15\/world\/middleeast\/jihadists-receiving-most-arms-sent-to-syrian-rebels.html?smid=tw-share&amp;_r=0\">an article<\/a>\u00a0confirming that, \u201cMost of the arms shipped at the behest of\u00a0Saudi Arabia and Qatar\u00a0to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of\u00a0Bashar al-Assad\u00a0are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists.&#8221; Incidentally, those weapons were being sent with U.S. approval\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/news.antiwar.com\/2012\/06\/21\/cia-funneling-arms-to-syrian-rebels-through-turkey\/\">and coordination<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>More than sending material to officially designated terrorist groups, the U.S. is aiding Syria&#8217;s rebels despite the fact that the United Nations has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.trust.org\/item\/?map=syrian-govt-forces-rebels-committing-war-crimes--un\/\">repeatedly condemned<\/a> them for committing war crimes. Further still, the\u00a0<em>Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424127887323848804578606100558048708.html\">reported<\/a>\u00a0two months ago\u00a0that legal advisers to President Obama warned that the U.S. &#8220;risked violating international law&#8221; by arming the rebels.<\/p>\n<p>So is the U.S. government breaking the law by aiding and abetting terrorists? I would think so. American citizens have been <a href=\"http:\/\/news.antiwar.com\/2011\/12\/20\/us-citizen-convicted-of-providing-material-support-to-terrorists\/\">convicted<\/a> for much less under these material support laws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that &#8220;the CIA has begun delivering weapons to rebels in Syria, ending months of delay in lethal aid that had been promised by the Obama administration, according to U.S. officials and Syrian figures.&#8221; &#8220;The shipments,&#8221; the article continued, &#8220;began streaming into the country over the past two weeks, along with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-21681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21681"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21683,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21681\/revisions\/21683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21681"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=21681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}