The goal for the Obama administration is to train and equip 5,400 Syrian rebels (aka Muslim jihadist terrorists) to fight ISIS (or Assad) by next May, but Obama Defense Secretary Ash Carter says they are way behind, with only 60 signed up so far:
DEFENSE ONE – The U.S. has begun training only 60 fighters to take on the Islamic State in Syria, Defense Secretary Ash Carter acknowledged in a heated hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday morning. And not only is the number “much smaller than we hoped for at this point” — three months into the program — but the U.S. has not yet determined what it will do when those fighters are attacked by the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Carter said.
“I can look at your faces and you have the same reaction I do, which is that’s an awfully small number,” the defense secretary told the senators. It will, he said, “get larger over time.”
Some 7,000 volunteers are awaiting approval to begin the training, Carter said. The defense secretary explained that U.S. law sets a high bar for the vetting, which includes counterintelligence screenings to ensure trainees won’t “pose a green-on-blue-threat to trainers.” Potential fighters must also pass a background check for atrocities and display a willingness to abide by the laws of armed conflict.
“You mentioned we’re currently training about 60 fighters. I gotta tell you Mr. Secretary, after four years, that’s not a very impressive number,” McCain said.
Carter said the military is way behind its interim goal of training 3,000 fighters by year’s end, 5,400 by May 2016.
Not only that, but according to Carter, they haven’t even decided if they are going to support these Syrian jihadists if they get attacked by Assad while they are fighting ISIS. McCain wasn’t too pleased at hearing this:
[McCain] then asked whether the U.S. would defend the fighters if they engaged with Assad’s forces. Carter responded, “We are telling them that we are arming and training them in the first instance to go after ISIL and not the Assad regime; that’s our priority.”
Pushed by McCain, he continued, “I think we have some obligation to them once they are inserted in the field … they know we will provide support to them,” but the decision on what that would look like “will be made when they are introduced.”
McCain responded sharply, calling it an “unpleasant exchange” and accusing Carter of evading his questions. “That is a small comfort to the people you are recruiting now that a decision will be made later on,” he said.
Carter ultimately said that fighters haven’t been told they’ll be defended.
McCain called that shameful. “You have not told them you will defend them because you have not made the decision, and you want to train them quickly and send them in,” he said.
So this is the jihadi army that Obama expects to be more successful against ISIS than American troops?
PATHETIC!