Jim W. Dean interview: US training of moderate militants in Syria a total failure

 by Jim W. Dean, VT Managing Editor,  …with Press TV, Tehran

[ Note: As exhausting as last week’s trip was to Beirut and Damascus (Mike Harris’ route had him on the road for 39 hours), it has been a joy to see what we were predicting to the Syrians that would be happening soon rolling out like a movie script this week.

Our main first report on the trip has been written and sent to New Eastern Outlook, and we will post here as soon as we can. But I can tell you that this training fiasco, contributing to General Allen leaving, was one of the items.

His cover story was not being given enough White House support to combat ISIL, when this meager 5000 “moderate” fighters a year boot camp has been the failure of all failures, when it was only going to be a token ground effort anyway.

Never covered in all the media reporting was that the “5000 trained a year for three years” was really an admission that we expected large scale desertions and changing sides, so they were planning on a steady flow of replacements.

Wiser management would have suggested that programs expected to fail should be nipped in the bud and the money and effort put into something else. But for some reason they never call us for our input on these hair-brained schemes they come up with. It’s like the contractors just feel that, “If the checks don’t bounce, it’s not a failed program for us.” The dummies already have a long track record of US trained “moderates” going over to the Jihadis.

I could train college ROTC students to do better than this, even though I know the cover for the fiasco was that “there were political reasons for going ahead with the program” — as if that makes it less of a dumb move. You just can’t make this stuff up. Thank God the US troops are not dying for this insanity… JD ]

______________________________

– First aired  …  September 27,  2015 –

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 VT.

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.

______________________________

Jim Davis

Jim Davis is the son of USMC MGySgt. Lesley Davis (Ret.) who passed away on April 24, 2006, from ALS caused by Agent Orange. His dad’s mission before he passed on was to ensure all veterans, spouses, children, and widows all received the benefits, medical care and attention, and proper facilities from the VA.

Because of the promise made to his dad to carry on the mission, in May 2006 Davis began as a one-man show sending out 535 letters every single week to all members of Congress requesting and politely demanding the fulfill their promises made over the past decades to care for life those who wore the uniform and their families.

Veterans-For-Change was born in August 2006 with a very small membership of 25 people composed of veterans, spouses, widows, family members, and friends and to date continues to grow.