The Syrian “Rebels”, a.k.a. Al Qaeda in Syria (a sub-component) are known to have recently come into possession of Soviet MANPADS.
Ghaddafi had Soviet MANPADS in his arsenal.
The Turks were (by several accounts) helping run Libyan guns to the “Rebels” From Benghazi.
It is a very short hop of the imagination to suggest that the U.S. laid its hands on lots of plausibly deniable Soviet MANPADs in Libya, and shipped them through Turkey to Al Qaeda in Syria.
The “Rebels” have been shooting down Assad’s copters with them. There is video on Youtube. There are lots of pictures of Jihadis with MANPADs in Syria.
So, while U.S. Stingers would put a bigger fingerprint of Uncle Sam on the shipment, supplying Soviet MANPADs that came under our control is just as bad. It’s just a touch more deniable for Hussein.
Okay so running soviet weapons is just as bad as running U.S. weapons, but he said it was “treason”. How is it “treason”.
My guess is that it’s illegal, though I’m not sure of that.