Obama ignored warnings about Assad ouster: Report
US President Barack Obama ignored warnings from senior military and intelligence officials that the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would lead to “chaos” and extremist militants taking over the war-torn country, according to a Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist.
"Barack Obama's repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office -- and that there are 'moderate' rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him -- has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon's Joint Staff," Seymour Hersh wrote in the January 7, 2016 edition of the London Review of Books.
Hersh cited a highly-classified report by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2013 which warned the White House about the dire consequences of the push to topple the Assad government.
The American investigative journalist also said that Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, told him that the agency repeatedly warned the "civilian leadership" about that policy.
In addition, a senior adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Hersh that the DIA/Joint Chiefs report took a "dim view" of the Obama administration’s covert program to fund and arm “moderate” militant units battling the Assad government.
The joint report found that the program had been co-opted by Turkey and targeted all of the opposition in Syria including terrorist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra and Daesh (ISIL), according to Hersh.
"The assessment was bleak: there was no viable 'moderate' opposition to Assad, and the U.S. was arming extremists," the journalist wrote.
In August 2011, President Obama publicly called for President Assad to step down.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the Obama administration looked for “cracks” inside the Syrian government in an effort to encourage a coup against Assad.
According to the Journal, by the summer of 2012, White House efforts to overthrow the Syrian government had failed and instead shifted to supporting the militants operating inside the country.
In October, the Pentagon admitted that its “train-and-equip” program had failed as the $500 million scheme only succeeded in training a “handful” of recruits.
The years-long crisis in Syria has claimed the lives of more than 250,000 people and displaced millions of others.
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