Al-Qaeda-linked Groups Trying to Take Control of Syrian Opposition

The latest proof that the Syrian rebels forces are connected to the al-Qaeda terrorists who want to destroy the western way of life comes from the progressive apologists at the Washington Post.

The two rebel groups, with their distinct lineages to the terrorist network founded by Osama bin Laden, have become the focus of Western fears that jihadist influences within Syria’s rebel movement are rising. Two and a half years after the conflict in the country started, Islamists are carving out fiefdoms and showing signs of digging in.

“We all have the same aqidah [Islamic creed] as al-Nusra or the Islamic State,” said a 23-year-old Jordanian Palestinian who gave his name as Abu Abdallah in an interview in Jordan and who fights for a rebel brigade allied with the Islamists. “The aim is to free the Muslim lands and have the Islamic flag there.”

The prominence of the two groups — as fighters, as recruiters and, more recently, as local administrators — appears to have accelerated even as the Obama administration seeks to bolster moderate and secularist Syrian rebels with new weapons and training. Multiple independent studies, as well as assessments by Western and Middle Eastern intelligence officials, show the hard-line Islamists surging ahead by almost every measure, undermining Western efforts to find a democratic alternative to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

These are the same rebels who the President wanted to support, first by arming then by a full-scale attack on the regime after reports of government-led chemical weapons attack. These are the same rebels Senator John McCain still wants our country to help.

The al-Qaeda affiliates have clashed with other rebel groups, and, occasionally, with each other, and their use of foreign fighters and attempts to impose an ultraconservative ideology have alienated some Syrians accustomed to secular rule.

“The situation is so bad,” said Mohammed Abdelaziz, an activist in the north-central city of Raqqah, who says the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria — popularly known as ISIS — criminalized the use of tobacco and carried out public executions. “A lot of people have just escaped the city, and many more are planning to.”

But other Syrians have embraced the jihadists and welcomed the return of civil order in towns devastated by months of fighting.

 On Friday Human Rights Watch, accused ISIS and other al Qaeda-led rebels in Syria of conducting an early August attack on a village killing at least 190 unarmed civilians and abducting more than 200, committing war crimes in the process.

The further we get away from the tensions of late August/Early September when Obama was getting ready to bomb Syria the more we learn the objections to the planned action were justified.  This is a "Civil" War between the bad guys and the other bad guys and any US action to help the rebels is aiding the terrorist groups who want to destroy the United States.