According to Fox News, Secretary of State John Kerry has confirmed that the U.S. is training anti-Assad forces taking part in the Syrian conflict. This has been reported for a while, but always using anonymous sources.
Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed to Fox News that the U.S. is training anti-Assad forces in the Syria conflict, saying Tuesday the hope is to convince President Bashar Assad to "change his current calculation."
Kerry, speaking to Fox News in Doha, Qatar, became the first U.S. official to acknowledge the off-site training on the record. He would not go into detail about the training, describing it as "one part" of the U.S. effort and something that "a lot of countries" are doing.
"I think what President Obama is hoping is to build on what has already happened. The president put in place sanctions and that helps to strip some of President Assad's ability to fuel his war machine," Kerry said.
The New York Times previously reported on the effort to train Syrian opposition forces, quoting unnamed officials, but this is the first time the State Department has spoken openly about it.
"There are a lot of nations working at this," Kerry said of the effort to pressure Assad. "And so I think President Assad needs to read the tea leaves correctly."
Clearly, this will outrage Democrats who constantly bemoan our intrusions into Middle Eastern affairs. This also does little to help Biden's claim that "no President has done as much to physically secure the state of Israel as President Barack Obama."
The rebels we've apparently decided to train are, as Reuters reported in December, heavily connected to Islamist extremists within the Muslim Brotherhood.
"The unified command" Reuters wrote, "includes many with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and to Salafists, who follow a puritanical interpretation of Islam. It excludes the most senior officers who had defected from Assad's military.
"Its composition, estimated to be two-thirds from the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies, reflects the growing strength of Islamist fighters on the ground and resembles that of the civilian opposition leadership coalition created under Western and Arab auspices in Qatar last month."
Assad is no friend of the Israeli people, but under Obama's watch the Brotherhood has taken control of Egypt, is struggling to overthrow Jordan, and is on the brink of doing the same in Syria. Should the rebels depose Assad and take control of the country, Obama will have helped install another Muslim Brotherhood government on Israel's borders.
