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Comment by woah | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps they could grow to the point where they can make an alliance with the US (we would do it for strategic reasons, like in the case of Saudi Arabia). There would be a re-branding into the "Free Syrian Republic" or some such, and the buy out would be complete. Assad out of power, oil controlled by the US. It's what we wanted back when we gave ISIS (then known as the "Free Syrian Army") their initial startup capital and weaponry.

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Watch out for signs that ISIS is hiring a PR firm (which is what Saudi Arabia did) to convince us that they're the good guys, and whomever they're fighting are the badder guys.

http://www.prwatch.org/books/tsigfy10.html

It's already been done that for Al Nusrah, though not by Saudi but Muslim Brotherhood and Turkey.

Al Nusrah is the new hip and modern wing of Al Qaida. They are now so moderate and progressive that only stone women using Fair Trade stones.

The FSA and ISIS are two different entities. Both still exist. The third major player is Al Nusra Front, which falls under Al Qaeda. FSA and Al Nusra are fighting ISIS, the Syrian government, and Hezbollah.

In a very interesting interview conducted by Al Jazeera a few months back, the head of Al Nusra Front stated that ISIS and the Syrian government/Hezbollah never really fought each other.

I am sure that at least some area some local commander of either Al Nusra or FSA have joined Isis, for various reasons, like being besieged by Assad's forces, running out of munition, etc.

This is also the messy part of civil war to survive alliances are fleeting. And so it is totally believable that some weapons given by the West to support FSA ended up in Isis hand willingly.

> when we gave ISIS (then known as the "Free Syrian Army")

There are several sides to the Syrian Civil War. The Free Syrian Army is different from ISIS

This makes so much sense that I am afraid it will happen. It's not like the US hasn't gotten in bed with unpopular countries before, and what the government really wants is for the major geopolitical power in the Middle East to be allied with us so we can secure cheap energy.

> they can make an alliance with the US

It's hard to make an alliance with someone who already funded you.

there's not that much oil to control in Syria

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