The French attack

[fishpoopoo]

Originally Posted by spence

There's so much wrong here I'm not sure where to begin.

And Washington D.C. disagrees with you.

This came out before the Paris attacks.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...ebel-training/

Senators tell Obama to halt Syrian rebel training

By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Friday, October 2, 2015

President Obama’s program to train Syrian rebels is a total failure and needs to be scrapped, a bipartisan group of senators said in a letter to the administration Friday, saying it’s time the national security team acknowledge the disaster and come up with a new strategy.

As the centerpiece of Mr. Obama’s Syrian strategy, along with American airstrikes, the training has backfired — and some of the rebels the U.S. equipped turned around and struck a bargain to give ammunition and trucks to al Qaeda-backed forces in Syria, the senators said.

“The Syria Train and Equip Program goes beyond simply being an inefficient use of taxpayer dollars. As many of us initially warned, it is now aiding the very forces we aim to defeat,” the four senators — three Democrats and one Republican — said in their letter.

Defense officials admitted last month that they were falling far below their promise of thousands of fighters trained this year, and of the several dozen who had been trained, only “four or five” are actually on the battlefield. The others were killed or captured almost immediately upon being deployed.

The Pentagon says it has dozens more fighters in the pipeline, but said it will miss its targets. But officials rejected the need for a rethink, telling the Senate Armed Services Committee that the president and top Pentagon officials think they have the right mix.

One key to that was a decision to allow American warplanes to provide air cover for U.S.-backed rebels. But that could be more difficult now that Russia has committed its forces to the fight in Syria, complicating American military officials’ plans.

[spence]

Originally Posted by fishpoopoo

And Washington D.C. disagrees with you.

This came out before the Paris attacks.

When in doubt, quote random story...

[fishpoopoo]

Originally Posted by spence

When in doubt, quote random story...

Here's another one.

http://www.salon.com/2015/11/20/capi...d_focus_on_is/

Friday, Nov 20, 2015 01:45 PM EST

CAPITOL HILL BUZZ: Forget Assad, focus on IS

Deb Riechmann, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — In an unusual alliance, a House Democrat and Republican have teamed up to urge the Obama administration to stop trying to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad and focus all its efforts on destroying Islamic State militants.

Reps. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, and Austin Scott, R-Ga., introduced legislation on Friday to end what they called an “illegal war” to overthrow Assad, the leader of Syria accused of killing tens of thousands of Syrian citizens in a more than four-year-old civil war entangled in a battle against IS extremists, also known as ISIS.

“The U.S. is waging two wars in Syria,” Gabbard said. “The first is the war against ISIS and other Islamic extremists, which Congress authorized after the terrorist attack on 9/11. The second war is the illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad.”

Scott said, “Working to remove Assad at this stage is counter-productive to what I believe our primary mission should be.”

Publicly, the United States has focused its efforts on fighting IS and urging Assad to step down. But beyond thousands of U.S. airstrikes targeting IS in the region, the CIA began a covert operation in 2013 to arm, fund and train a moderate opposition to Assad. The secret CIA program is the only step the U.S. is taking on Assad militarily.

In the Philippines on Thursday for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, President Barack Obama reiterated America’s demand that Assad must go. “The bottom line is: I do not foresee a situation in which we can end the civil war in Syria while Assad remains in power,” Obama said.

Since 2013, the CIA has trained an estimated 10,000 fighters, although the number still fighting with so-called moderate forces is unclear. CIA-backed rebels in Syria, who had begun to put serious pressure on Assad’s forces, are now under Russian bombardment with little prospect of rescue by their American patrons, U.S. officials say.

For years, the CIA effort had foundered — so much so that over the summer, some in Congress proposed cutting its budget. Some CIA-supported rebels had been captured; others had defected to extremist groups.

Gabbard complained that Congress has never authorized the CIA effort, though covert programs do not require congressional approval, and the program has been briefed to the intelligence committees as required by law, according to congressional aides who are not authorized to be quoted discussing the matter.

Gabbard contends that the effort to overthrow Assad is counter-productive because it is helping IS topple the Syrian leader and take control of all of Syria. If IS were able to seize the Syrian military’s weaponry, infrastructure and hardware, the group would become even more dangerous than it is now and exacerbate the refugee crisis.