US still seeks regime change in Syria by any means: Eric Draitser

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The main purpose of what the United States is doing in the Middle East is to achieve regime change in Syria by any means necessary, an American political commentator says.

Eric Draitser, the founder of StopImperialism.com, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Tuesday while commenting on the Pentagon’s latest statement about the so-called moderate Syrian militants.

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Militants from the so-called Syrian Revolutionary Front and the Harakat Haz recently surrendered to al-Nusra Front in Syria with some fighters pledging to join the group.

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On Monday, the US Defense Department downplayed the setback created after al-Qaeda-linked terrorists overran strategic northern areas in Syria occupied by US-backed “moderate” militants.

“It has come as no surprise to anyone who has been following the events on the ground in Syria and the US policy towards Syria to find that the Pentagon is now backpedaling regarding its program of providing weapons to so-called moderate rebels in Syria,” Draitser said, adding, “because of course we know – that’s to say those who are actually aware of the reality in Syria – understand that the idea of so-called moderate rebels is itself a mythology.”

The Nusra terrorists have made advancements along an area in north of Syria which borders Turkey and driven out US-backed fighters from their strongholds.

The US has armed “moderate” rebels in Syria with heavy weapons, including TOW anti-tank missiles and GRAD rockets.

Draitser said that the notion of “moderate” militants was “created by the United States in order to justify what is undoubtedly an unjustifiable policy of arming terrorists inside of Syria and along the border with Turkey in order to affect regime change by any means necessary, and that really is the genesis of the creation of what we now call the Islamic State, or ISIS, which emerges out of that same policy that the United States has been pursuing since 2011.”

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He stated that the purpose of the US program is to foment, to continue the war in Syria. “It is to provide the ammunition, provide the weapons, [and] provide the financing for many of these elements that have been fighting against [Syrian President Bashar] Assad. And now ISIS in recent months has only become the latest in a long line of pretexts for that purpose.”

“Now the notion that the Pentagon is pedaling this idea that the Syrian revolutionary forces and these other so-called moderate rebels are no longer ‘moderate’ because they have gone over to al-Nusra Front, and over to the Islamic State, it is also a mythology,” Draitser continued.

“The delineation between these groups is really unclear at best. The truth of the matter is some of the smaller factions presented to the United States as moderate for the purpose of securing financing, securing weapons and then they were folded right back into the big tent that the terrorists have there in Syria,” he noted.

He went on to say that “these distinctions between the groups are somewhat arbitrary. These are for domestic political consumption to convince the American public that what the Obama administration is doing is somehow justified because they are supporting the ‘right’ guys.”

“All of these elements, be they the so-called moderates, be they the extremists of Jabhat al-Nusra, be they the extremists of ISIS, are all part of their larger agenda in the region and in Syria specifically that the United States have been pursuing; this is regime change by any means necessary and that really remains the central purpose, the central function of what the United States is doing, and all of these programs… are really part of that broader agenda,” he concluded.

The ISIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria.

Since late September, the US and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out airstrikes against ISIL inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate.

The Pentagon also plans to train and arm 5,000 militants in Syria as part of the Obama administration’s long-term strategy to confront ISIL.

Some analysts have long maintained that the United States and its allies have seized on the ISIL threat to target the Syrian government. The US and its allies have been accused of funding and arming the insurgency in Syria.

Alan Sabrosky, a US Marine Corps veteran, has said that the United States’ airstrikes in Syria often target militants with “no military value” and actually aim at the country’s infrastructure.

Article By Press TV