News Release

Biden’s Syria Regime Change Lie

Share

Former Vice President Joe Biden claimed at the Tuesday night debate: “And with regard to regime change in Syria, that has not been the policy we change the regime. It has been to make sure that the regime did not wipe out hundreds of thousands of innocent people between there and the Iraqi border.”

CHARLES GLASS, [currently in Italy] charlesglassbooks at gmail.com, @charlesmglass
Glass is a noted journalist who has covered the Mideast for decades. His books include Syria Burning: A Short History of a Catastrophe. He said today: “Joe Biden should remember that he, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton all called for the removal of Assad from presidency of Syria. If that isn’t regime change, what is?”

Biden said at an AIPAC event in 2013: “Our position on that tragedy could not be clearer: Assad must go.” Also see 2013 video from the Wall Street Journal: “Obama and Erdogan: Syria’s Assad Must Go.”

Biden’s remarks were in response to comments by Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who also said to Pete Buttigieg: “the U.S. actually providing arms in support to terrorist groups in Syria, like Al Qaeda, HTS, al-Nusra and others, because they are the ones who have been the ground force in this regime change war.”

In 2018, Glass wrote the piece “Think the War in Syria Is Winding Down? Think Again” for The Nation. Glass also wrote the piece “‘Tell Me How This Ends,’” which examined U.S. policy toward Syria over the last period for Harper’s earlier this year:

“CIA director David Petraeus became so concerned that Al Qaeda affiliates were receiving the weapons that he flew to Turkey on September 2, 2012, to complain to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The supply chain became public after the September 11 murder of U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens in the Benghazi compound. Media outlets, including Fox News, reported that ships delivered TOWs, surface-to-­air missiles, and other high-­tech weaponry from Libya to the port of Iskenderun in southern Turkey. After the publicity, Washington put full blame on Qatar for running a rogue operation without U.S. approval. ‘That’s bullshit,’ a CIA source told me. …

“The triumphs of the Islamic State caused a change in thinking at the White House. One of the Obama insiders I interviewed said, ‘When I left in 2014, it was game over for dealing with Syria outside of ISIS.’ The Islamic State’s sometime rival, occasional ally, and fellow Al Qaeda offshoot Jabhat al-­Nusra also provoked the administration’s ire. Joe Biden spoke to Qatar’s ruler, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thari, in April of 2013, about his support for the extremists. One of Biden’s closest advisers said that the vice president told the emir, ‘If you gave me a choice between Assad and Nusra, I’ll take Assad.’ Biden went public at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government on October 2, 2014:

“‘Our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria. The Turks … the Saudis, the Emiratis, etc. What were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad. Except that the people who were being supplied were al-­Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.’ [See video.]

“The result of U.S. meddling in Syria was failure on all counts. It did not depose Assad, who looks like he is set to hold on to power for years. It did not expel Iran and Russia, whose influence and footprints in Syria expanded. It did not break the Syria-Hezbollah alliance. Nor did it ameliorate civilian suffering, as refugees either stay in exile squalor or return to demolished homes. It had the unintended consequence of turning Turkey from a traditional ally into a regional adversary. Syrian conspiracy theorists claim the U.S. goal was to destroy Syria, as it did Iraq, to protect Israel. Only if that were true could the United States be said to have achieved any objective.”

Glass recently appeared on the accuracy.org news release: “Syria vs Erdogan?

See his website for more material: CharlesGlass.net.

Also see New York Times report from 2017: “Behind the Sudden Death of a $1 Billion Secret CIA War in Syria,” which noted: “…some of the CIA-supplied weapons had ended up in the hands of a rebel group tied to Al Qaeda further sapped political support for the program.”