From the moment Congress put aside a huge chunk of money to train a new faction of pro-US Syrian rebels, the plan has been heralded by officials as an eventual game-changer. The Pentagon was to train some 5,400 rebels a year, a figure they later revised down to about 3,000.
There was a lot of debate about whether 3,000 or even 5,000 new rebels would be a difference maker, but all that debate seems sort of silly as officials today revealed that after many months of careful vetting, they’ve found a grand total of 60 rebels to train.
Since the Pentagon pumped some $500 million into this training program, they are getting Syrian rebels for about $9 million each, a bad deal even by Pentagon standards. Pentagon officials conceded this was “below expectations.”
The White House also felt the need to address the matter, with a similar understatement in which they conceded that the 60 rebels they’re in the process of training is “not enough” to win the war against ISIS.
Only 60 "moderate" cannibals? That's not going to do much to improve morale of the good ole boys of ISIS.
S'pose it's long been lost on Americans how ridiculous it is that 'The Pentagon' gets to talk about such a thing openly. Jeez, if you're a small-ish country with a terrorism problem you'd certainly have an excellent guess who its training and funding is now. And you'd probably only be off by about one layer.
Oughta make it harder for Americans to dismiss prior allegations to that effect. But is that happening?
They have to be careful because it would be bad PR to train someone whose going to bite the hand of their master. Seriously, who would want to be the guy who let Osama Bin Laden II be trained? They'd never hear the end of it. Hopefully they stick to this nice slow incrementation rather than doing something really stupid and create thousands of trained recruits for Al Qaeda and ISIS, or worse send in more Americans into harms way. It looks like a terrific deal to me depending on your point of view! If they wanted to fight these groups they would go after the donors. They'll never do that.
Oboomer and other flunkies propped up by the USG regime spoke
at nauseam about liberty and freedom, while this corrupt regime
continues its killing, bombing, and murdering of civilians in
Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Afghanistan. This same regime
supports murdering Zionists occupying Palestine, and Nazi
thugs in the Ukraine who stole power in a coup.
Back in the USG, if you're African American, or Latino, your
chances of being stopped, beaten, and murdered by the cops
are far greater than other members in society.
Happy 4th of July.
Watched some of the clips of McCrazy slamming the effort by Obama. But I'll just bet that behind closed doors he's ecstatic it was Obama's training of the "moderate" rebels that failed….and not HIS and the South Carolinian cracker's plan to train the "moderate" rebels they was so hot-to-trot to implement. Won't stop them from claiming their vetting process would have been better though.
I also noticed on TV (NBC, at least) that there was no mention at all of what the program cost the American taxpayer. And, oh by the way, just because they've come out and admitted the program is a failure it doesn't mean they've ended it even though they could only find 60 "moderate rebels." Didn't AW report a month or so ago that some of those who "graduated from the training were 60 years old? The TV didn't mention that either.
Only 60 future ISIS members showed up to receive free weapons from Uncle Samuel?!?
Whatdayamean the program is a failure? *Somebody* got that $500 million – I'm sure *they* consider the program to be a resounding success.
The fate of all mankind I see,
Is in the hands of fools.
—–King Crimson
I thought these rebels were going to overthrow Assad and rather than fight IS? So which lucky company gets to pocket half a billion to "train" some 60 guys?
Well 60 fighters trained by the US is nothing compared to the 20,000 Iranian troops that are fighting for Assad. Doesn't sound like much in the way of US intervention. So stop calling Syria a "US war"