President Obama waives federal law preventing arming terrorist so America can aid Syrian rebels
President Barack Obama on Monday announced he would waive the federal law intended to prevent the supply of arms to terrorists groups so the U.S. can provide arms and other military assistance to the Syrian rebels, the Washington Examiner’s Joel Gehrke reports.
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The Arms Export Control Act (AECA) allows the US president to waive provisions in Sections 40 and 40A, which forbid providing munitions, credit and licenses to countries supporting acts of terrorism. But those prohibitions can be waived “if the President determines that the transaction is essential to the national security interests of the United States.”
Obama ordered such a waiver for supplying chemical weapons-related assistance to “select vetted members” of Syrian opposition forces, the administration announced on Monday.
The announcement came after a UN report, which confirmed that sarin gas was indeed used in Syria on August 21, but didn’t point to either the Syrian army or the rebel forces as the culprits.
US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power said she was convinced that details of the report “make clear that only the regime could have carried out this large-scale chemical weapons attack.”
But Power’s counterpart from Russia Vitaly Churkin said the report has no “airtight proof or conclusions” pointing to the Assad government and that it allows “everyone to draw their own conclusions, hopefully professional and not affected by political pressure.”
The US plan to provide chemical weapons-related assistance to Syrian opposition was in the works before the August attack a senior administration official said as cited by NBC News. Under the AEC rules, it will take at least 15 days before any of the materials can be officially shipped to Syria.
Even in his recent speech Obama referred to some of Assad’s opponents as “extremists” – read it here.
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