Okay, it’s not just the Obama administration who chose to believe the “moderate Syrian rebel” line – let’s not forget John McCain and many military “experts” too. McClatchy DC.com reports
“At another hearing that week, Kerry responded to a lawmaker’s skepticism about the existence of moderate rebels by saying that only a fraction of the fighters were “al Qaida and the bad guys.” Maybe 15 to 25 percent, he estimated.
“There is a real moderate opposition that exists,” Kerry said.
If the skeptical lawmaker was reassured, professional Syria watchers were not. Many were aghast at what sounded to them like either dangerous naivete or an outright lie, given that the U.S. government’s own internal assessments had found from very early in the conflict that al Qaida-style extremists were playing an outsized role in the rebel fight.”
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/national-security/article31018362.html#storylink=cpy
For additional information, check out Elizabeth O’Bagy, former political director for the Syrian Emergency Task Force, former Syria subject matter expert at the Institute for the Study of war, after being fired for lying on her resumé from the ISW, John McCain hired her to be one of his staffers.
https://libertybellediaries.com/2013/09/03/stumbling-upon-some-facts-in-less-than-5-minutes/
https://libertybellediaries.com/2013/09/08/president-obama-defining-his-foreign-policy-big-picture/
https://libertybellediaries.com/2013/09/12/institute-for-the-study-war-fires-elizabeth-obagy/
https://libertybellediaries.com/2013/09/15/oh-those-pesky-facts/
And on and on and on, I’ve written about Syria… And at end of the day we are back to what I’ve been saying for as long as these yahoos have been talking about training “moderate Syrian rebels”:
https://libertybellediaries.com/2014/10/11/another-half-baked-cakewalk/
Geesh, why are we paying these “policy experts” so much money, when if you read some American and a few foreign news sites regularly, you could see the lies clearly? You would also figure out that what the Obama administration and John McCain & friends have been selling us is every bit as flawed intelligence as the Bush WMD in Iraq issue that throws the Democrats into apoplexy. Time to demand careful analysis of the intelligence and quit politicizing it!!! Military decisions should be based on American national interests,not partisan political ones.