McCain Says We Can Identify The 'Good Guys' In Syria, After He Unwittingly Meets With Jihadi Terrorists

This would be hysterically funny if it wasn't for the fact that Senator McCain is pushing for us to supply US funds, arms and even boots on the ground to support an al-Qaeda and Islamist takeover of Syria. Senator John McCain claim's that we can identify who the jihadis are, except...while visiting Syria this week he posed in a photo with rebels who kidnapped 11 Lebanese Shi’ite pilgrims…:

“A number of the Syrians who greeted Senator McCain upon his arrival in Syria asked to take pictures with him, and as always, the Senator complied,” Rogers said. “If the individual photographed with Senator McCain is in fact Mohamed Nour, that is regrettable. But it would be ludicrous to suggest that the Senator in any way condones the kidnapping of Lebanese Shia pilgrims or has any communication with those responsible. Senator McCain condemns such heinous actions in the strongest possible terms,” Rogers said.

Well, yes. But the point is that he wants us to spend American blood and treasure to support replacing a Shi'ite theocracy's client state with an Islamist, salafist dictatorship and even Senator McCain, who claims to be well informed is clueless when it comes to telling who's 'moderate' and who isn't.

The arguments he makes above for an American intervention are ludicrous.

At 2:40, he says that we can “handle this". In other words, we ought to get involved regardless of whether it makes sense or not, but just to show we can. If Russian missiles shoot down out planes, then what? And if we send in the 1,800 American Marines based on Jordan's border with Syria in to fight Hezbollah, Assad's troop and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, is Senator John McCain going to guarantee that they don't go in handcuffed by the same ridiculous Rules of Engagement they're saddled with if Afghanistan that's gotten so many of them killed and maimed?

With this particular Islamist friendly commander-in-chief in the White House?

McCain has been sitting in the Senate while Christians have been ethnically cleansed from Iraq and hasn't said word one about it to my knowledge, let alone trying to do anything about it. Ditto with what's going on with the Copts in Egypt. Does he have any bold plan to stop the ethnic cleansing and massacre of Alawites, Druse and Christians in Syria when his Jihadi friends take over? Is it really worth us fighting a war to add another piece to the emerging Islamist caliphate? As bad as the status quo is, how does it help our interests to spend blood and treasure to change it? It doesn't, not in the least.

McCain is even more farcical when he tries to talk knowledgeably about how we can 'weed out' jihadis from the rebels. He says there are only 7,000 fighters in the openly al-Qaeda faction al-Nousrah (more like 10,000 according to my sources) and that we can avoid the arms and money falling into their hands. How, exactly? If you give an anti-tank weapon to someone, what guarantee do you have he won't sell it or transfer it? None whatsoever in those conditions. Has he not been paying attention to what's going on in AfPak?

Also, he seems to forget that the vast majority of the fighters actively involved are jihadis and Islamists even if they’re not in al-Nusra. Even Libyan arms dealers selling off the arms they got from Khaddaffi's armories thanks to President Obama's intervention couldn't care less about the distinction:

[F]irst, the Libyans wanted to know who the Syrians were exactly and which rebel group each represented. There was a representative from Jund-Allah (Soldiers of God), which operates in and around the capital Damascus; a commander from Ansar al-din (Supporters of the Faith) in Lattakia province; and most significantly a man who is one of the seven members of the political office of Jabhat Syria il-Islamiya (the Syrian Islamic Front), one of the country’s largest, most cohesive and strongest Islamist militant coalitions, led by the Salafi Ahrar al-Sham Brigades. (The extremist al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra is not part of this alliance.) Coffee was ordered — Turkish coffee for the Syrians and cappuccinos for the Libyans. The Libyan from Zintan, wearing faded black jeans, a cream-colored shirt stretched taut across his waist and a gray sports jacket, did most of the talking. He fingered black worry beads, while his colleague from Benghazi listened. His first question was about whether the men around him recognized the FSA and its 14 provincial military councils. All said they did not. “Their commanders are failures, they are corrupt,” the Syrian from Ansar al-Din said. “There is not even one battalion, in all honesty, that they can control,” the Islamic Front representative said. “These people [senior defectors in the FSA like the one the Libyans had met the night before] were placed as facades, in the beginning, as media personalities, but as real commanders on the ground? Not at all.”

The Free Syrian Army, which is also dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood is commanded by General Idris, who McCain met with in Syria a few days ago and who he’s pushing as some kind of moderate 'freedom fighter'. In reality, the FSA is rapidly merging with jihadis like al-Nousrah and Idris is just a figurehead, a convenient mask.

McCain actually says, at 4:40 that the rebels “are trying to achieve the same thing that we have shed American blood and treasure for for well over 200 years.” I wasn't aware that America made a practice of fighting for sharia rule, the suppression of women,the murder and ethnic cleansing of Jews and Christians or Islamist theocratic fascism. But then John McCain is a sitting Senator, and he undoubtedly knows better than me. Talk about calling someone else 'wacko birds'...!

 Senator McCain, it's past time for you to resign. Please, for your own sake and ours. Just go. (H/t Allah,via Ace's place)