The interview shows me Obama’s strength in recognizing and stating the failure of the neocon program to which his administration was hitched by policymakers in the government.
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“Do you think if you ran again, could run again, and did run again, you would be elected?” asked Steve Kroft on “60 Minutes” Sunday night. Can we… train and equip a moderate opposition that’s willing to fight ISIL?
If you were so skeptical, why do it?
Kroft told Obama, if you expected to train 5,000 men and you ended up with only five, it’s not just a “miscalculation”, it’s an “embarassment”.
President Barack Obama: Look, there’s no doubt that it did not work. And, one of the challenges that I’ve had throughout this heartbreaking situation inside of Syria is, is that- you’ll have people insist that, you know, all you have to do is send in a few- you know, truckloads full of arms and people are ready to fight.
“Being associated with America today carries great costs and great risks”, said Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow at the worldwide Institute for Strategic Studies in Bahrain. If you have reason to believe that any written material or image has been innocently infringed, please bring it to the immediate attention of CDN via the e-mail address or phone number listed on the Contact page so that it can be resolved expeditiously.
President Barack Obama was flayed by “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft over his policy in Syria. We know the Russian autocrat is “leading”, the argument goes, because he’s deploying troops and “conducting military operations”.
“What Putin wants is to establish a sort of co-dominion with the U.S.to oversee the Middle East-and, so far, he has nearly succeeded”, said Camille Grand, director of the Fondation pour la recherché stratégique, a French think tank. So it’s highly likely that what President Obama was referring to in that clip was the satellite intelligence, maybe a few of the communications intelligence, which the US had, rather than a very good source in the Kremlin. We should not rule out that USA forces could play a limited role in this ground contingent. He’s got people on the ground. We’re the indispensible nation. “But we are not going to be able to get rid of them, unless there is an environment inside of Syria and in portions of Iraq in which local populations – local Sunni populations – are working in a concerted way with us to get rid of them”.
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Appearing on “Fox News Sunday”, former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Ambassador Dennis Ross said Putin is simply taking advantage of US weakness. All we can do at this point is back the Kurds. It is an opportunity to impose significant costs on an adversary that wants to undercut the United States everywhere. Reenergize and refocus, though. “But by the time I’m finished, I think it will be time for me to go”. I don’t think it’s uniform. But because that seems to be his aspiration, we do need to develop more expertise in this area.
