US training of militants in Syria a total failure: Pundit
The US military's $500-million program to train and equip militants in Syria has been a "total failure" and a "waste of American tax payers’ money," a political analyst in Atlanta says.
“How can something go on like this where defense contractors are making huge amounts of money and it’s just a total and utter failure,” asked Jim W. Dean, the managing editor and columnist at Veterans Today.
This program is part of an ongoing “game” in the region that has resulted in US “taxpayers’ money being spent into oblivion; money down a big rat hole,” Dean told Press TV in a phone interview on Sunday.
Dean urged the American public to contact their Congress members and pressure them to stop this wasteful spending and “insanity.”
Following days of denials, the Pentagon revealed Friday that militants trained by the US to fight the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group in Syria had turned over some of their supplied weapons to an al-Qaeda-affiliated group.
The US Central Command admitted that the so-called New Syrian Forces (NSF) surrendered their weapons to the al-Nusra Front in exchange for safe passage within the region, a startling acknowledgement that contrasted with earlier Pentagon denials.
"Unfortunately, we learned late today that the NSF unit now says it did in fact provide six pickup trucks and a portion of their ammunition to a suspected al-Nusra Front (group)," Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said.
“The report of NSF members providing equipment to al-Nusra Front is very concerning and a violation of Syria train-and-equip program guidelines," Ryder said.
The development is another embarrassing setback for the US effort to "train and equip" the so-called moderate Syrian militants to fight Daesh.
The $500-million program was originally intended to train about 5,400 militants a year for three years, but the plan has been plagued with problems and has seen only a fraction of that number getting trained.
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