US troopers prepare their gear during the Eager Lion joint
military exercise near the
Jordanian–Saudi border,
260 kilometers (less than 162 miles)
south of Amman, on May 24, 2012.
The US military has secretly deployed a force of ‘planners and specialists’ to Jordan in an apparent bid to protect the Amman regime from the spread of Syrian crisis and set the stage for creating of a “buffer zone” inside Syria.
The clandestine effort by the US military to dispatch “a task force of more than 150 planners and other specialists” marks the first reported bid by Washington to prepare for a military intervention in Syria and is being led by “a senior American officer” at a “Jordanian military training center in northern Amman,” influential US daily The New York Times reports Wednesday.
According to the report, quoting “American officials familiar with the operation,” the mission includes setting up plans to “insulate” the US-backed Jordanian dictatorship in Amman from the potential outbreak of the foreign-sponsored turmoil in Syria, a key base for anti-Israeli resistance in the region.
“The idea of establishing a buffer zone between Syria and Jordan - which would be enforced by Jordanian forces on the Syrian side of the border and supported politically and perhaps logistically by the United States - had been discussed,” the Times article reports, quoting unnamed US officials.
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