The CIA’s program to heavily arm “moderate” rebels to fighting the Syrian government, which has been ongoing since the Syrian Civil War began, was supposed to be “plan B” when the most recent ceasefire efforts in the country failed, with plans in place to throw a bunch of anti-aircraft and other arms at them to go after the Russians.
It’s not happening though. Officials were hyping up the proposal during a recent meeting, which also included possibile military action against Russia in Syria, but officials say the idea was “neither approved nor rejected” and just left it in limbo.
It’s not an oversight, but rather a reflection of the president’s unwillingness to continue the program himself, and a desire to leave it as an option for the next administration next year. The CIA program has been pretty unsuccessful, and the new arms weren’t seen as a likely gamechanger at any rate.
As one official put it, the units are “not doing any better on the battlefield, they’re up against a more formidable adversary, and they’re increasingly dominated by extremists.” That’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, and it’s likely the lack of alternatives that has prevented it from being abandoned outright.
The CIA, of course, has been on board with the arming from day one, and hasn’t been all that worried about the extremist links within groups like the FSA, seeing regime change as their long-term goal, and not worrying too muich about how they get there.
This has led to a major ideological and practical split between the CIA and Pentagon, with the later preferring more dependable factions like the Kurds, even if they aren’t necesssarily willing to fight an open-ended US-backed war of regime change.
It’s also led to the US-backed rebels from the CIA side engaging in open fighting with the Pentagon-armed groups more than a few times, and the growing sense is that throwing more arms at the CIA’s allies is just throwing more fuel on the fire, and not going to accomplish anything.
Some are openly calling for a “ruthless” assessment of the program’s viability in the long run, though again, the White House seems to be planning to just delay it for a couple more months and leave it up to Obama’s successor.
What Hillary will do will put this in the shade. We can see the hawks circling. The war drums are beating in major media. All the propaganda outlets are going full speed dumping lies on us.
Well, Sheeyat! Anything else could crash our economy and bring an end to all we hold dear. Wars are usually good for America – we’d have been fu*ked long ago with the great Asian adventure.
You think we’d have done so well with only bank shenanigans, real estate and Mall outings? We don’t manufacture much besides weapons, buildings and fantasies – the rest is imported and paid for with dollars worth what we print – convertable for those weapons buildings and fantasies.
15 years after the World Trade Centre attack, America is on the verge of starting World War III in defence of al Qaeda.
Think about that a minute.
Make you reconsider AQ doing 9/11? It all makes sense if that whole thing was one big dog-wagger.
Incredible…
“It’s also led to the US-backed rebels from the CIA side engaging in open
fighting with the Pentagon-armed groups more than a few times,…”
The right hand of America is fighting with the left hand.
Which is certainly not the first time it’s happened.
It’s just the way it is with Obama’s foreign policy.
Just my opinion.
Guy Fawkes
Editor
FawkesReport.com
I don’t know about Obama sometimes…I’d swear he’s doing this not to preserve the options necessarily insomuch as it is the amount of pushback he’s comfortable with when it comes to The War Machine.
It is interesting to learn that the Pentagon brass is much less inclined to engage in risky war mongering in Libya than the CIA. If that persists into a Clinton administration it will be much less easy for that administration to put “no-flight zones” into place unilaterally if at all. The CIA does not have fighter planes. The Pentagon does.
The C17’s can be diverted to EUkrainia. Congress wants them armed. Jesus wants them armed and, doggone it, they don’t have much of an armaments industry of their own. (Bwaaaah-haaaah-haaah-hah-hah!)
Nope. We will not supply the “rebels” with weapons, but we will continue to sell weapons to Saudi Arabia, who we know from past experience will deliver them to the FSA, who will share them with al-Qaeda, who will share them with Da’esh.