“Those stories are not true; it’s adapting it”.
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“I wasn’t satisfied with early efforts in that regard and so we are looking at different ways to achieve basically the same kind of strategic objective, which is the right one, which is to enable capable motivated forces on the ground to retake territory from ISIL and reclaim Syrian territory from extremism”. Lindsey Graham said the program was bound for failure from the start.
Defense Department officials have said there have been no incidents or conflicts with the Russians in the last day or so.
Iran has been providing an economic lifeline and intensive military assistance to Syria’s President Assad, whose forces have been locked in a protracted civil war in which more than 250,000 people have died.
That was a “very challenging recruiting mission”, she said. “The U.S.is not capable of fighting ISIS because of the concerns its allies have that this will strengthen a government they find unacceptable”.
Most of the billionaire’s latest hires have worked for the targets of his antagonism.
The USA will look at “different” approaches to its training programme for Syrian opposition groups, Defence Secretary Ashton Carter has said. “And I’m the first one to acknowledge it has not worked the way it was supposed to”.
The irony, of course, being the U.S.-trained rebels reportedly had to pledge to fight only ISIS and not Assad. Even the Supreme Military Council, the umbrella rebel organization whose formation the West had hoped would sideline radical groups, is stocked with commanders who want to infuse Islamic law into a future Syrian government. Assistance could take the form of airstrikes and equipment.
Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the committee, says the USA should consider establishing a no-fly zone that allows rebels a safe place from which to operate, and shooting down Syrian helicopters that are bombing civilians. The administration has all but ruled out providing CIA-backed groups with surface-to-air missiles that can down aircraft, fearing such weapons would end up in the wrong hands, officials say.
US Secretary of State John Kerry, at a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi in Washington, confirmed that a Regional Digital Counter-Messaging Communications Centre would be set up in Malaysia. Frustrated by their own inability to resolve the crisis over more than four years, the president and his team express a quiet confidence that Moscow nearly certainly will be no more successful.
As a result, advisers said Mr. Obama may have to essentially wait out Russia’s intervention.
The U.S.is abandoning its goal of having America’s military train a new force of moderate Syrian rebels, turning its focus to equipping, arming and supporting established groups already fighting against the Islamic State group inside Syria, officials said Friday.
He did not spell out details but said Defense Secretary Ash Carter had directed that “equipment packages and weapons” be provided to “a select group of vetted leaders and their units”.
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The United States said it would also provide air support to rebels as they battle Islamic State, Cook said.
