Thinking?
US to abandon training new Syria rebel groups:
The US is to end its efforts to train new Syrian rebel forces and says it will shift to providing equipment and weapons to existing forces.
Its $500m (£326m) programme was heavily criticised after it emerged that US-trained rebels had handed vehicles and ammunition over to extremists.
It emerged last month that only four or five of the fighters were in Syria.
When it became obvious that the program wasn’t working the Pentagon actually changed to a different program instead of doubling down and wasting even more time and money.
Rather amazing actually…
2 comments
It has been pretty clear since the day the photos came out of John McCain posing with ISIS fighters that our policy in Syria has been FUBAR since the beginning. We tried to support mythical “pro-American” fighters but the only people we could actually find willing to proclaim themselves to be “pro-American” were small time scammers who had no intention of actually going out and fighting, they just wanted the free food and free weapons that we were giving them.
My sources say that this is actually the *second* reboot of the program, the first reboot managed to kick out most of the ISIS moles but ended up with ranks full of scammers instead — many of whom ended up selling their gear to the highest bidder and using the money to flee to Turkey, so there’s that. So now the Pentagon has given up. Well, six years of futility will do that, I guess…
Trying to limit recruits to people who would only fight against ISIS and not against Assad – an incredibly senseless approach. Given the way things have gone in US efforts they should have been satisfied with people who would fight when attacked. ‘Enemies of my enemies’ whould have been the most they could have expected.
The Waffen-SS had the same problems trying to raise ‘volunteer units’ in the Balkins. Most of the arms ended up in the hands of Marshal Tito’s forces.