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“I’m the first one to acknowledge it has not worked the way it was supposed to.”

Politico

President Barack Obama is pulling the plug on his year-old attempt to train a so-called moderate force of Syrians to battle the Islamic State, officials said Friday. Instead the military will “refocus” its efforts as U.S. policy there continues to founder.

Senior defense officials told reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Ash Carter in London that the U.S. Central Command would change its strategy to “enable” Kurdish and other combatants who’ve proven their mettle against the Islamic State after months of tough fighting in northern Syria.
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So rather than persist with an attempt to recruit a roughly brigade-sized unit of Syrians, train them and then set them loose against ISIL, American troops will train the “enablers” to talk with U.S. warplanes and call in airstrikes, defense officials say.

“This focus on equipping and enabling will allow us to reinforce the progress already made in countering ISIL in Syria,” Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a statement Friday. Although mindful of the track record on the program, he also sought to condition expectations for how effective the new effort might be.

“As we have said from the beginning, the fight against ISIL will take time,” Cook said. “Working with local partners to win back territory taken by ISIL will continue to be a long and arduous process.”

Carter told reporters that Obama would make an announcement about the change in strategy, but the White House said on Friday morning that no such announcement was planned.

The so-called New Syrian Force policy never had much public support in Washington and quickly became an orphan this year when the Pentagon had to acknowledge its first cadre of troops had all been killed, captured or scattered. Then Gen. Lloyd Austin, head of the Central Command, acknowledged to Congress that only “four or five” U.S.-trained fighters were at large in Syria.

The Pentagon “paused” the program following that embarrassment, but the problems didn’t end. Later, a group of U.S.-backed troops had to surrender ammunition, vehicles and equipment to a terror group linked with Al Qaeda in order to get safe passage through a contested area of Syria.

A secret CIA-run program to train Syrian rebels fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has also come under direct attack from Russian airstrikes, which have targeted the weapons and supplies provided by the U.S. and other foreign powers.

There are conflicting reports about the numbers of CIA-backed fighters killed or hurt. But Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, has said he knows from his own sources in Syria that fighters linked to the U.S. have died.

Obama and White House officials have mocked calls for the U.S. to support Syrian rebels against Assad or ISIL, including most recently at the president’s press conference last Friday.

“I’m the first one to acknowledge it has not worked the way it was supposed to,” he said.

Even so, the administration asked Congress for $600 million to continue the “New Syrian Force,” which lawmakers endorsed in the defense authorization bill they passed this week and sent to the president. Obama has threatened to veto that legislation over other objections.

6 thoughts on “Obama folds effort to train ‘moderate’ Syrians”
  1. If the Mass Murdering, Lying, Thieving and traitorous Odorbama is changing his Syrian butchery, it’s because his boss, Nuttyahoo, told him to.

    London sources familiar with Israeli politics add that Russian strategy has the tacit backing of Israel. “This is because [President Vladimir] Putin has told [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu that Israel can count on a no-threat zone running from Damascus south and east to the Golan. No threat means no Syrian Army, no jihadists. Russia and Israel will now have what [Israeli Prime Minister David] Ben-Gurion once explained was Israel’s long-term objective – the breakup of the large, potentially powerful secular Arab states into small sectarian territories too weak to do anything but threaten each other.”

    http://johnhelmer.net/?p=14288

  2. This is insanity. The US goes from backing one “rebel”, ie terrorist srmy after another.
    By any other name,they are the same.

    The definition of insanity is ,” Doing the same thing over,and over again without result”.

    But one can see the frustration of defeat in this decision.

    Assad will stay in,and Russia remains in the Middle East.

  3. AM,ERICA IS THE TERRORIST NATION THAT HAS BEEN IN THE BUISNESS OF REMOVING HEAD OF STATE FOR MORE THAN 100 YEARS NOTHING HAS CHANGED FOR AS LONG AS THE AMERICAN PEOPLE FIND THEMSELVES UNDER SIDGE OF ZIONIST JEWS ACROSS THE BOARD FROM THE WHITE HOUSE TO THE CITY COUNCIL OF EVERY CITY ACROSS AMERICA.

  4. The US had removed heads of state for more than two centuries, not one. It’s policy guided by the judaic masonry since it’s birth as a free nation was and is “divide and conquer”. Latin America was the first victim, USA stole three million square Km from México, the remaining iberian countries resented too the diabolic dominion of the USA and it’s infamous and damn masters, the international jewry. After the crash of Latin America, followed Spain, and the rest of Europe, Asia, Africa. All the world hates the Jews’ ruled America, everybody hopes the end of this evil, satanic empire. The real people of USA is good, though very gullible to the yidds’ lies.

  5. I like Omar C. Bustamente’s overview of the USA as a client state of Organized Jewry.
    I think the term “client state” fits quite neatly. I just looked it up:
    A client state is a state that is economically, politically, or militarily subordinate to another more powerful state in international affairs.”
    Is the USA subordinate to Organized Jewry in international affairs? Yes it is – sung to the tune of “Yes we can!”
    Actually, I think it is probably also subordinate to Organized Jewry in intra-national affairs. That would make the USA not merely a client state but a slave state, wouldn’t it?
    Possibly a defining test of whether a nation qualifies as a slave state would be:
    does the government of the nation implement austerity on its own people while indulging in very expensive wars against nations who are no threat to itself!
    Before the American British colonies became a nation, Great Britain was a client/slave state to Organized Jewry. I think the same can be said for the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden (based on its ‘honour’ of establishing the world’s first official national central bank). Let us not leave out the powerful and glorious Roman Catholic religion (based on the fact that a member of the de Medici family became a Pope and changed the legal status of usury from a mortal sin to a virtue).
    Yes Omar CB, Organized Jewry is master of the art of “divide and conquer”.
    Its primary weapon in that despicable art is usury!
    If you can sucker a nation to subject its people to usury, and allow Organized Jewry’s people to run the institution of money, then that nation will inevitably become a slave state. Inevitably!
    Money works like clockwork. Set it up, keep its springs wound, and it will tick tock its way forever, and the usurers will become ever richer, more powerful and more glorious.
    And we ordinary people have the honour of being those springs in that clock.
    You see: our lives are not pointless after all.

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