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Will CIA End Support for Rebels in Syria?

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newsrelease30Reuters reports: “Trump ends CIA arms support for anti-Assad Syria rebels: U.S. officials.”

RAY McGOVERN, rrmcgovern at gmail.com, @raymcgovern
As a CIA analyst for 27 years, McGovern led the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and, during President Ronald Reagan’s first term, conducted the early morning briefings with the President’s Daily Brief.

He recently wrote the piece “The Syrian Test of Trump-Putin Accord” for Consortium News, which states: “The U.S. mainstream media remains obsessed over Russia’s alleged ‘meddling’ in last fall’s election, but the real test of bilateral cooperation may come on the cease-fire in Syria.”

McGovern writes: “The immediate prospect for significant improvement in U.S.-Russia relations now depends on something tangible: Will the forces that sabotaged previous ceasefire agreements in Syria succeed in doing so again, all the better to keep alive the ‘regime change’ dreams of the neoconservatives and liberal interventionists? …

“Last fall’s limited ceasefire in Syria, painstakingly worked out over 11 months by Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and approved personally by Presidents Obama and Putin, lasted only five days (from Sept. 12-17) before it was scuttled by ‘coalition’ air strikes on well-known, fixed Syrian army positions, which killed between 64 and 84 Syrian troops and wounded about 100 others.”

McGovern now works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Also see from Gareth Porter “How America Armed Terrorists in Syria” for the American Conservative.