State Department Funds O'Bagy's Pro-Rebel Syria Lobbying

Did Secretary of State John Kerry know that his own department funds the advocate he cited last week when he was goading America into war with Syria? Just how corrupt has the drive to strike Syria been?

“My salary comes from the Institute for the Study of War. I don’t get a salary from working with the Task Force,” O’Bagy said. “I get paid contracting fees for very specific contracts.”

How much she makes is “completely dependent on the contract,” says O’Bagy. “Usually, they [the SETF] kind of write in a specific fee. So it’s not a percentage of the contract, but it’s like I get, just off the top of my head, like two thousand dollars to help implement this project. And then I just get that standard contracting fee. And I actually get a 1099.”

State Department contracting firms like “ARK [Access Resources Knowledge], Chemonics, Creative [Associates International]—a number of the big contractors” set up the contracts and pay the Syrian Emergency Task Force, O’Bagy told TheDC.

Of course, she lost the salary from the ISW today. Yet even in firing her, the ISW “stands by” her work.

Kimberly Kagan, who founded the ISW in 2007, said in an interview that while she was “deeply saddened” by the situation, she stands by O’Bagy’s work on Syria.

”Everything I’ve looked at is rock solid,” Kagan told POLITICO. “Every thread that we have pulled upon has been verified through multiple sources.”

That’s unfortunate. The ISW should invest in staff with the ability to use the Google. They could learn quite a bit.

The bottom line here is that Elizabeth Bailey O’Bagy, formerly of the Egyptian national women’s soccer team somehow, has been paid by the State Department to lobby on behalf of Syria’s rebels to draw the United States into war in Syria. O’Bagy says today that she is “not advocating the United Staets start a war or get in the middle of one.”

Red card for a flagrant foul. She has advocated that the US get more and more involved in the war. Putting a smiley face on the Islamists is part of that advocacy.