Pentagon officials updated the press on their vetting process for training the “new” Syria rebel faction that they’re planning to create, saying they’ve identified “about 1,200″ fighters for it.
That seems well short of previous plans, as the Pentagon had originally said they were planning to train some 5,000 fighters within the next year. There just don’t seem to be that many around.
It’s also well short of what former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, once an outspoken support of the program, envisioned. He’s now very critical of the plan, and says too many of the moderate rebels are willing to work with al-Qaeda.
Ford says that the new rebel faction is going to be too small to be relevant, saying that even if they got 10,000 new fighters a year, it wasn’t clear they’d be able to accomplish anything. The Pentagon, by contrast, seems like they’re going to be lucky to get much more than 10% of that number.
1200? Seriously? And how much US taxpayer $$$$ are they supposedly spending on this "training?" For that matter, how much have they already spent and yet have produced only a list of names – not trained bodies?
Perpetual war and bloodshed is typical USG policy.
It's easier to steal natural resources in a region
when its people are too busy slaughtering each other.
Meaning, once 1,200 "rebels" receive training and equipment will morph into ISIS a month later and we will be obliged to bomb them. Again.
You want a trained force to fight ISIS, use the f_cking Syrian Army, for Pete's sake!
US arming Syrian Rebels. Translation: US arming ISIS.
What is the difference? They are both Sunni, They are both fighting Assad. Where is the dividing line between the "moderate" Syrian rebels and ISIS? "Moderate" Syrian rebels is a fantasy.
This is a con game, a scherade! They are playing with you. ISIS is an asset/proxy of western NATO, Saudi, Israeli Geostrategy. The real targets are Iran and Syria and Russia who is backing especially Syria.
This is a game of chess. The only people who cannot see what is going on is the American people. Really very sad.
Seriously, are we now for years urging that "Assad must go", while we cannot find more then 1,200 people to identify as "opposition" to be trained and armed? And all these years who exactly has been the beneficiary of our arming and training — the process that US started first in Turkey until Turkey balked, and US migrated the process to Jordan? So, only 1,200 "rebels. I wonder how many of them are actually FROM Syria, or better yet, how many actually now live in Syria? Or how long time ago have they left Syria, or may be even their parents have emigrated before they were born. In Moscow, there was a meeting between REAL opposition parties in Syria and Syrian government. They all concluded that their first priority is to fight ISIL, and other groups, and give full support to Syrian armed forces. They all agreed that there are no conditions to run elections, but that any changes in government will be done in consultation with opposition. And what do we do? For years, arm and nurture vicious barbarians — all in the name of fighting "brutal dictator". This movie plot is getting very, very old. So, how much will it cost us to TRAIN about 1,000 people, and how do we expect them to function in an environment where tens of thousands extremists flourish, and one hundred thousand strong army is trying to fight them? What will be their job? Just pin a tiny receiver on buildings we would like to knock down In our "precision" bombing? It all looks like an incredibly incompetent mess.