Though an official announcement on the matter has not been made yet, reports are emerging that the Pentagon has suspended the “train and equip” program intended to create a new faction of “pro-US” Syrian rebels, which has been dubbed the New Syrian Forces (NSF).
Two classes of NSF fighters ever reached Syria during the program’s history. The first class of 54 fighters was overrun quickly, and “four or five” were confirmed to still be active earlier this month.The second class, estimated at 70-75 fighters, entered Syria ten days ago.
If the first class was a failure, the second class was embarrassingly so, with the group almost immediately surrendering its weapons and vehicles to al-Qaeda. Centcom today released further details about the chain of events leading to this surrender.
The new details make Centcom’s timeline look even worse on the matter. The NSF forces entered Syria on 9/18, and Centcom spokesman Col. Patrick Ryder claimed to have first gotten information on the arms surrender on Sunday 9/20. The first media reports to that effect emerged Tuesday, 9/22, and on Wednesday 9/23 Ryder himself loudly denied the media reports, accusing al-Qaeda of making the whole thing up even though he’d known for days it was true. The Pentagon finally admitted what happened on 9/25.
The US has faced heavy criticism for its $500 million training program, both for wasting huge amounts of money training almost no one, and for throwing large amounts of weaponry at the country even though their track record shows that those weapons overwhelmingly end up in the hands of Islamist factions.
Despite reports that the training itself has halted, Col. Ryder suggested about 50 more fighters, the sum total of classes three and four, might be sent to Syria anyhow.
There U go ‘Military Industrial Cronies arm Terrorists. Way to go Schmucks.
I don't think that any government program ever gets suspended.
Well, I do strongly appreciate the Imperialist States of Amerikastan wasting its money on things that do no good at all – like the F35, for instance, or this. That’s money it could have used for a *successful* imperialist enterprise which is now gone. So I wouldn’t mind it trying to train another million of these “vetted moderates”; at current rates of expenditure that would bankrupt Warshington, definitely a good thing.
Another 500 million dollars of the American taxpayers money down the drain….but who is counting?
People shouldn't forget that the CIA is also training fighters and has been since before the media took any interest in Syria. I would suggest that the end of this project will just mean that they will double down on the CIA efforts.
Failure my A**, it achieved the goal of training the terrorists they support. The US might be evil but not dumb.