U.S. Weighs Expanded CIA Training, Arming Of Syrian Allies Struggling Against Assad
Source: Washington Post
By Greg Miller and Karen DeYoung November 14 at 7:45 PM
The Obama administration has been weighing plans to escalate the CIA’s role in arming and training fighters in Syria, a move aimed at accelerating covert U.S. support to moderate rebel factions while the Pentagon is preparing to establish its own training bases, U.S. officials said.
The proposed CIA buildup would expand a clandestine mission that has grown substantially over the past year, U.S. officials said. The agency now vets and trains about 400 fighters each month — as many as are expected to be trained by the Pentagon when its program reaches full strength late next year.
The prospect of expanding the CIA program was on the agenda of a meeting of senior national security officials at the White House last week. A White House spokesman declined to comment on the meeting or to address whether officials had reached a decision on the matter.
Others said the proposal reflects concern about the pace of the Pentagon’s program to bolster moderate militias, which so far have proved no match for al-Qaeda offshoots including the Islamic State.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-weighs-expanded-cia-training-arming-of-syrian-allies-struggling-against-assad/2014/11/14/227abfe4-6c17-11e4-9fb4-a622dae742a2_story.html
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Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)
cstanleytech
(26,298 posts)cutting them off from that as focusing to much on using the CIA and military training will only give so much before its a waste of money and time.
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)cstanleytech
(26,298 posts)training rebels and or arming them tends to backfire on the US more often then not so going after the governments sources of income to weaken them would make more sense imo.
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)If Syria was supplying and training rebels to attack the US, I think we'd consider it an act of war.
840high
(17,196 posts)cstanleytech
(26,298 posts)
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)nor was Gadaffi or Saddam.
Our constant need to go after the "new Hitler" seems to cause more problems than it solves.
cstanleytech
(26,298 posts)but rather that when we tried the whole isolationism thing in the past like we did back before WWII it can backfire on us.
CJCRANE
(18,184 posts)between total isolation and constant intervention IMO.
It's weighted too far over to the intervention side in the last decade with no indication of it slowing down.
jakeXT
(10,575 posts)Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)I suggested that we should not be trying to overthrow the government of a sovereign state that hasn't attacked us.
Especially since we're still wallowing in the fall-out from the last time we did that.
cstanleytech
(26,298 posts)with some people in the US who didnt want us to get involved because it wasnt "our" problem until it became ours after Pearl Harbor.
Edit: In fact a bit of that also happened in Afghanistan when the Taliban took over there were people who didnt want us to do anything because it wasnt our problem until it became ours after 9/11 because the Taliban then provided Bin Laden a safe haven to setup bases for Al-Qaeda.
jakeXT
(10,575 posts)Edit event
In an interview, Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser, admits that it was US policy to support radical Islamists to undermine Russia. He admits that US covert action drew Russia into starting the Afghan war in 1979 (see July 3, 1979). Asked if he has regrets about this, he responds, “Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.” Then he is asked if he regrets “having given arms and advice to future terrorists,” and he responds, “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?” The interviewer then says, “Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.” But Brzezinski responds, “Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam….” (Le Nouvel Observateur (Paris), 1/15/1998) Even after 9/11, Brzezinski will maintain that the covert action program remains justified. (Nation, 10/25/2001])
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a011598stirredup#a011598stirredup
cstanleytech
(26,298 posts)Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)bhikkhu
(10,718 posts)which is years of civil war. Realistically, the people there might be better off if Assad won, and things could return to a bleak, but peaceful, status quo. Years of war leads to Somalia, or Afghanistan - destruction of society that can take generations to recover from.
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)
SamKnause
(13,108 posts)
Jake Stern
(3,145 posts)Because not doing so is appeasing the new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, new, NEW Hitler!
Ermahgerd!
Old Nick
(468 posts)
ozone_man
(4,825 posts)200,000 lives lost at your hands is enough already. Unless you want to try to beat Bush's tally at a million Iraqi's or so.
quadrature
(2,049 posts)look what happened in Libya.
there was no followup, just chaos.
Libya --> Mali --> the rest of WAfrica is on fire
Libya --> Benghazi affair --> Syria is on fire
Libya --> add to ongoing Yemen troubles
