Though the figure was immediately questioned, British Prime Minister David Cameron used the claim of 70,000 “moderate” Syrian rebels ready to ally with Britain as the centerpiece of his argument to expand the war against ISIS into Syria.
Today, Cameron finally admitted the figure was false, admitting that many of those rebels are “relatively hardline Islamists” and that there “aren’t enough” moderate rebels to actually defeat ISIS in the way Britain planned.
Most of Cameron’s comments appeared centered on shifting blame, however, saying it “wasn’t a figure I invented” but came from intelligence agencies as a “best estimate.” He did, however, refuse to name the agencies that the figure came from.
Cameron insisted it was necessary to keep the bulk of the details about these “moderates” secret, however, on the grounds that the Assad government might use the details to target them, and that Britain could potentially work with even the “relative hardliners” in some cases.
Simple solution: redefine “moderate”.
They are moderate when compared to say….Genghis Khan with Panzers and Drones…yeah they’re pretty moderate. Certainly they’d be the paragons of virtue when compared to heavily armed telepathic T-Rexes. Nevermind the lazer sharks…
Cameron may well have obtained the number of “moderate” rebels from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the one man “anti-Assad” propaganda campaign run by a guy who lives in Coventry, England, who admits he hasn’t actually been in Syria for almost twenty years. SOHR has repeatedly made claims that later turn out to be little more than scurrilous rumours in support of ISIL, al-Qaeda, and other “moderate” head chopping, liver eating terrorists.
No serious intelligence agency would have come up with the outlandish claim of “70,000 moderates” when only a few months before the number of “moderates” was being counted in single digits (i.e. 4 or 5).
Same folks who said Sadam had nukes
I read recently of another such intelligence tomfoolery where the original intelligence estimate, by the “Intelligence” professionals, was superceded by another one labeled a “government intelligence” report, meaning presumably that you are right. Same people, Wolfowitz might even have his old job back.
My guess is it was American intelligence guesstimates. Funny thing is it was the Brits that fed us the Yellow Cake intelligence. You have to wonder who is running these intelligence agencies.
Andrew Rawnsley from the Guardian accurately describes these kinds of figures as “calculated by statisticians at the Department of Wild Guesses, the Ministry of Thin Air and the Office of Think of a Number and Double It.”
I’m going to continue to believe that, yes, Cameron IS the one who came up with the number “70,000” until proven otherwise. The depths and lengths these cretins will go to further their agendas used to surprise me…no longer.
Bill Clinton estimated a 100,000 young Muslim boys had disappeared in Kosovo . Supposedly by the brutalities of the Serb Christians . The truth of the matter was a little over 2200 people had been killed about 1/4 of them Serb Christians and the rest of them Kosovo Muslims . We found out that most of these Muslims killed were killed by fellow Muslim terrorists . The same terrorists NATO partnered with to drive out the Serbs from Kosovo . So faulting Carmeron for being mistaken about his numbers should come as no surprise . It has gotten to be regular western propaganda for disrupting the world . Particulairily when we partner with the most extremist terrorists through out the world