Why is the Obama administration trying to limit who gets arms and block heavy arms from being delivered to the rebels in Syria?
Because most of the arms the rebels have are not secure. There is no organized command structure, alliances between groups are very fluid, and cash is king - almost all the arms in rebel hands are up for sale.
Rebel groups get many of their arms from smugglers. Smugglers know how to get the arms into Syria and are true capitalists. They would be happy to have an anti-aircraft missile fall into their hands, each one is said to be worth a million or more dollars.
And rebel groups generally don’t share and supply each other with arms; they usually sell arms to each other, often using smugglers as middlemen.
Turkey is also no longer very eager to see large numbers of uncontrolled weapons floating around on the free market along its border. The Turkish government has recently woken up to the fact that this is really not a good idea as terrorist attacks have increased dramatically in Turkey in the past few months, and many or most of the weapons and expolsives being used in them are believed to be coming from Syria.
Just this evening a car full of explosives was detonated at a bus stop near a police station in Gaziantep - which is just north of the Turkish-Syrian border - killing eight and wounding 69, all civilians.
-------------------------
These are some of the other recent terror events in Turkey: In the past ten days or so, one Member of Parliament was captured and held for two days by the PKK, the brother of another MP was shot and killed - allegedly by PKK members or supporters, a Minister who was walking on the street in a town in southeast Turkey was attacked by a large crowd - his security detail reportedly had some difficulty in getting him to safety, and the Turkish intelligence service and police have warned MPs to curtail or stop their public appearances in southern Turkey.
About 100 Turkish soldiers have also been killed in terrorist attacks this summer.