Tag Archives: syrian rebels

Featured, Foreign Policy, Government Accountability, International

Pentagon Set to Renew Training of Syrian Rebels

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The Obama administration has reportedly approved the Pentagon’s request to once again arm and train Syrian rebels, albeit on a smaller scale than a previous effort that had a price tag of $500 million and effectively trained far less rebels than originally estimated.

There is currently limited information available regarding details of the new program other than statements that the program is confirmed to be re-launched. The Los Angeles Times reported that Col. Steve Warren, spokesman for the U.S. military operation to defeat ISIS known as Operation Inherent Resolve, has yet to declare how many fighters will be trained or when the program will begin. Warren reportedly noted that the new program will be a smaller operation, acknowledging that “this is part of our adjustments to the train and equip program built on prior lessons learned.”

After reports surfaced in Sept. 2015 that the the Pentagon was suspending its “train and equip” program for Syrian rebels, the program officially ended in Oct. 2015, largely due to its ineffectiveness. Trainees in the first group of the program were reported to have “largely disbanded soon after they were sent into combat; some were captured or killed, while others fled,” and training of another group “yielded only a small number of new fighters, drawing criticism from U.S. lawmakers who condemned the program as a joke and a failure.”

The original program’s cost reached $384 million and produced only 145 trained fighters, which was far less than the 5,400 fighters that the program had originally hoped to train.

In early March, U.S. Central Command (Centcom) commander, Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, asked the Obama administration for approval “to restart the effort by using a different approach,” according to The Hill.

Ben Swann released a Truth In Media episode, embedded below, that explored “the central issue of whether or not ISIS was created by ‘inaction’ by the United States government or by ‘direct’ action,” including the U.S. government sending weapons to Syrian rebels.

Origins of ISIS

Ben Swann explores the origin of ISIS that has already been long forgotten by American media. Swann takes on the central issue of whether or not ISIS was created by "inaction" by the United States government or by "direct" action.

Posted by Ben Swann on Thursday, March 19, 2015

According to the Department of Defense, the most recent estimated cost of “operations related to ISIL since kinetic operations started on August 8, 2014, is $6.5 billion and the average daily cost is $11.4 million for 571 days of operations.”

For more information, see these related links:
Flashback: Ben Swann’s Truth In Media on Syria

Al-Qaeda Whittles Down US-Trained Rebels in Syria

New US-Trained Rebels in Syria Gave Their Weapons to al-Qaeda

Pentagon’s Syria Rebel Training Cost $2 Million Per Rebel

U.S. Senators Call For Obama To End Program Training Syrian Militants

Obama Administration Ends $500 Million Syrian Rebel Training Program

Follow Annabelle Bamforth on Twitter.

Foreign Policy, International

Syrian Rebels Furious as Ceasefire Continues to Hold

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by Jason Ditz

After five years of civil war, Syria is experiencing a temporary return to normalcy, with a ceasefire now in its fifth day and still holding steady. There is a lot of negativity about the chances of making a peace deal, but everyone is enjoying the dramatic reduction in violence the ceasefire has provided.

Everyone except the rebels, that is. Having resisted international efforts to broker a settlement of the war, many rebel factions were dragged kicking and screaming by the international community into this truce, insisting all the while it wouldn’t work.

The rebels who were blasting the US for “betraying” them by supporting a doomed ceasefire last week are now blasting the US for “betraying” them by supporting a ceasefire which is working, and is heading toward some settlement short of installing them as the new government.

Rebels now say they’re convinced the US, Russia, and the Assad government are all plotting against them, and after previously making their participation in peace talks conditional on a ceasefire, they are hunting for a new excuse to keep the war going.

Foreign Policy, International

Pentagon Vows More Weapons Drops to Syrian Rebels

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by Jason Ditz

Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren today announced that the US intends to carry out more weapons airdrops in the Hasakeh Province of northeastern Syria, claiming the “Democratic Forces” faction has achieved massive gains in the weeks since they dropped their last batch of arms there.

The Democratic Forces have been hyped by the US as a major new force against ISIS, though most analysts agree the group exists “in name only” and simply refers to the Kurdish YPG and a few mostly irrelevant allies. Interestingly, the US claim of success is the first claim that any major territory has changed hands in Hasakeh recently.

Warren said the territorial gains “validate” the program, and that the US intends to send more weapons to “reinforce success,” though again the claim of territorial gains does not appear to be verified by any other sources, and even the Kurds aren’t claiming new victories in the area.

The planned weapons drops come amid talk of the US embedding a handful of ground troops in the “Democratic Forces” in the area, which suggests the intention of throwing more arms at the group is in part an intention to prop up the YPG forces ahead of embedding with them.

Government Corruption, International, Jason Stapleton Program

Jason Stapleton Explains the Hillary Scandal

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Is Hillary Clinton guilty of lying to Congress and conspiring with some of its members to secretly sell weapons to Libyan and Syrian forces? Were those same weapons used to attack and kill our ambassador and 3 other Americans during the assault on Benghazi?

Until today, most of it was wild speculation. But Judge Andrew Napolitano says he now has proof “to a moral certainty” that proves just that.

Listen to Jason Each Day: Subscribe on Itunes

Licensed arms dealer Marc Turi has released emails proving that Mrs. Clinton, as well as a host of high ranking diplomats and members of Congress, conspired to ship guns to rebels in Libya and Syria without the approval of Congress and unbeknownst to the State Department.

According to Judge Napolitano, Hillary “ran a secret state department within the state department.”

If the Judge is correct Hillary Clinton has committed multiple felonies should face the music. Is there truly justice for the politically protected? Time will tell.

Listen to Jason Each Day: Subscribe on Itunes

International

CIA Study Creates Doubt About Helping Syrian Rebels

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A still-classified study by the Central Intelligence Agency shows that covertly arming and training rebels rarely works. This is creating some doubt over whether or not the U.S. should do the same for Syrian rebels.

According to a story in the New York Times, the report is one of several CIA studies commissioned in 2012 and 2013, during the time the Obama administration was debating the Syrian civil war and figured that many past attempts by the agency to arm foreign forces coverly had minimal impact on the long-term outcome of the conflict. According to the report, they were even less effective when the militias fought without any direct American ground support.

“The findings of the study, described in recent weeks by current and former American government officials, were presented in the White House Situation Room and led to deep skepticism among some senior Obama administration officials about the wisdom of arming and training members of a fractured Syrian opposition,” wrote the New York Times.

Despite this, in April 2013, Obama had the CIA begin to train rebels in Jordan at a base and even more recently decided to expand this training mission in Saudi Arabia to train “vetted” rebels to fight ISIS. The Obama administration aimed to train about 5,000 rebel troops per year.

In an interview with The New Yorker published this year, Obama  alluded to the study:  “Very early in this process, I actually asked the CIA. to analyze examples of America financing and supplying arms to an insurgency in a country that actually worked out well. And they couldn’t come up with much.”

Bernadette Meehan, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said that “without characterizing any specific intelligence products, the president was referring to the fact that providing money or arms alone to an opposition movement is far from a guarantee of success.”

“We have been very clear about that from the outset as we have articulated our strategy in Syria,” Meehan said. “That is why our support to the moderate Syrian opposition has been deliberate, targeted and, most importantly, one element of a multifaceted strategy to create the conditions for a political solution to the conflict.”

Foreign Policy’s Marc Lynch, said that the scheme of arming rebels is “just wrong” and it’s a strategy that won’t work. He noted that an “external support for insurgents typically makes conflicts longer and bloodier.”

BenSwann.com has reported extensively that US intelligence on the ground in Syria have been supporting al-Qauda linked militants for years in a proxy war to overthrow the Assad regime.

Politics

Pentagon Officials Say They Can’t Decide on Which Rebels to Trust in Syria

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It’s been two weeks since President Obama started the bombing initiative of Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) positions in Syria, and the Pentagon leadership hasn’t made a decision on which Syrian rebels are trustworthy and capable enough to assist in taking territory away from the jihadist group.

Since the United States doesn’t want to commit U.S. ground troops, the military is considering raising a Syrian rebel force, which would be crucial for destroying ISIS and their footholds.

“No decision has been made as to who will lead the program,” said Commander Elissa Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman, to the Guardian.

Once selected for the training, the rebels will be led by Major General Michael Nagata, a special operations veteran. The supposedly moderate Free Syrian Army is expected to form the kernel of the proxy force, reported the Guardian. Nagata smeared journalists Seymour Hersh and Jeremy Scahill in a classified briefing after they published separate articles exposing secret U.S. military operations inside Pakistan.

The Pentagon hopes to have an initial force of about 5,000. Estimates of ISIS fighters range from 20,000 to over 30,000. According to officials, it would take approximately 8 months to prepare the ground troops.

One of the main questions that hangs over the operation is that the U.S. wants to use “vetted” and “moderate” Syrians against ISIS, but those fighters have consistently lost group to both ISIS and al Qaeda linked groups.

Benswann.com reported Vice President Joe Biden admitting “there is no moderate middle in Syria” and compared these fighters to “shop keepers.”

But the Obama administration and the mainstream continues the charade that the US is only supporting “moderate” rebels.

Recently talk show host Michael Savage told Alex Jones that he wasn’t buying the narrative of the US airstrikes on ISIS. Savage questioned why the US hasn’t targeted the Abrams tanks that ISIS took from the Iraqi army.

Savage asked Jones, “Have you seen one Abrams tank blown up?”

“No,” said Savage. “This entire war against ISIS is a sham. It’s a pretext for invading Syria, taking down Assad…”

Robert Dreyfuss in his book, Devil’s Game, How the US helped Unleash Fundamental Islam, states the US has supported radical Islamic activism over the past six decades, “sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly,” and is thus “partly to blame for the emergence of Islamic terrorism as a world-wide phenomenon.”

Dreyfuss cites a statement from Chas Freeman, “The neoconservatives’ intention in Iraq was never to truly build democracy there. Their intention was to flatten it, to remove Iraq as a regional threat to Israel.”

It could be possible that America’s strategy is to continue to supply arms to rebels – which ultimately falls into the hands of ISIS – through covert and overt operations in order to keep the Middle East in chaos.

After all, many analysts believe that a Middle East that is unstable with sectarian squabbles and no central power threatening Israel is in America’s best interest.