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The article appears to be behind a pay wall. I've argued that the concept of regime change in Syria was given lie because of these bans on MANPADS (surface to air missiles) and other heavier weapons...and the fact that the US could easily have destroyed the Syrian armed forces in about a week, at least enough for an early victory by the rebels. However, the CIA did, through Qatar or S. Arabia, provide many Tow II anti-tank weapons, which disabled around 18 Syrian T-55 and T-72 tanks (most of which were returned to service) in 2016. There are youtube videos of this available. [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvVd1e8Gwug ], I can't remember what year this was. But...the Syrian Army has one of the largest armored equipped armies on the entire planet with close to 5,000 armored vehicles with at least 3000 of that being heavy tanks (mostly T-55s, now obsolete but fine for urban warfare it seems). But total number of TOW anti-tank missiles are much higher according to this recent article: https://www.newsweek.com/us-military-targeted-own-missiles-middle-eeast-1277293 It seems that there were over 1000 TOW missile launchers given to the rebels in Syria. So the US via it's Arab state allies provided the missiles. But... The problem then really lies in the obvious lack of anything else such as command and control, access to satellite intelligence, MANPADS and even heavy machine guns to down helicopters and Russian fighter jets. Zip. Zero. There ARE YouTube vids of rebels using MANPADS to shoot down choppers and jets early on in the civil war but these were all taken from the Syrian arsenal by deserting Syrian troops. They are clearly Igla surface to air missiles being used by the rebels. So it goes again to motivation of by the US to supply some, but not enough, heavy defensive and offensive weapons by the CIA/NATO/EU. David _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com