Octopus Overlords

President Obama just found out how many good anti-ISIS fighters $500 million buys: five, at most.

Gen. Lloyd Austin, who leads the U.S. military’s Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday there are only four or five Syrian fighters left out of 54 who were trained as part of a U.S. program.

Rip wrote:

President Obama just found out how many good anti-ISIS fighters $500 million buys: five, at most.

Gen. Lloyd Austin, who leads the U.S. military’s Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday there are only four or five Syrian fighters left out of 54 who were trained as part of a U.S. program.

http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/obamas-syria ... -implodes/

Of course even those five may turn out to be as poor fighters as the Iraq military people we trained.

ABC wrote:General Lloyd Austin, the commander of U.S. Central Command leading the war on ISIS, told Congress today that only "four or five" of the first 54 U.S.trained moderate Syrian fighters remain in the fight against ISIS.

Christine Wormuth, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, also told the Senate Armed Services Committee that there are currently between 100 and 120 fighters in a program that was slated to have trained 5,400 fighters in its first 12 months.

Austin told the panel that goal was not going to be met and that options are being explored about how to retool the program which was intended to train moderate Syrian rebels to fight ISIS. So far, $42 million has been spent to develop the $500 million program which began training in April.

LawBeefaroni wrote:

Rip wrote:

President Obama just found out how many good anti-ISIS fighters $500 million buys: five, at most.

Gen. Lloyd Austin, who leads the U.S. military’s Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday there are only four or five Syrian fighters left out of 54 who were trained as part of a U.S. program.

http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/obamas-syria ... -implodes/

Of course even those five may turn out to be as poor fighters as the Iraq military people we trained.

Ahh, love WND's fuzzy math. No, sorry, did I say "fuzzy math?" I mean their outright bullshit.

ABC wrote:General Lloyd Austin, the commander of U.S. Central Command leading the war on ISIS, told Congress today that only "four or five" of the first 54 U.S.trained moderate Syrian fighters remain in the fight against ISIS.

Christine Wormuth, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, also told the Senate Armed Services Committee that there are currently between 100 and 120 fighters in a program that was slated to have trained 5,400 fighters in its first 12 months.

Austin told the panel that goal was not going to be met and that options are being explored about how to retool the program which was intended to train moderate Syrian rebels to fight ISIS. So far, $42 million has been spent to develop the $500 million program which began training in April.

Rip wrote: So only ten million each. Which it appears means we get 50 soldiers for $500 million. Well that makes me feel better.

The Pentagon spent $41.8 million (out of $500 million set aside for the training program) to vet, arm and pay the 54 rebels trained to date. They were inserted into Syria in July, only to be killed, captured or scattered after they ran into the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate.

Some of the rebels also went home for the end of Ramadan and never returned.

"It was some expensive kit we gave them -- dune buggies, M-16s, body armor, night vision goggles, helmets, boots," the official said, describing where some of the $41.8 million went.

The cost of the program -- and its meager results so far -- have lawmakers skeptical about authorizing it again.

At Wednesday's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., challenged the Pentagon's request for $600 million for more training next year.

"We're counting on our fingers and toes at this point," she said of the trained fighters.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., called it a "total failure."

The Pentagon had hoped to train 5,400 Syrian rebels in a year, and 12,000-15,000 over the next three years, but Austin admitted Wednesday the U.S. military would fall short.

"We certainly won't, at the pace we're going, reach the goal that we had initially established for ourselves," he told lawmakers.

Zarathud wrote:What would be the cost to train and deploy US troops? Only Rand Paul was willing to leave ISIS alone. If the Republicans actually believed ISIS is an existential threat to the West, $500 million is well worth expanding the program. And $42 million worth the proof of concept.

In 1982, Congress authorized $19 million to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. That's $47 million in 2015 after inflation.

Carpet_pissr wrote:As mentioned on a previous page, the shitty turnout is because the US priorities are not aligned with the majority of those we are trying to recruit for the program. Namely, that we want an anti-ISIS group, but the guys we are recruiting are only (or more) interested in fighting Assad.

Rip wrote:As far as trap, who cares. When people don't fall into it they jump into it.

Rip wrote:I might be awesome if she wasn't known to have a filthy mouth.

http://www.dcclothesline.com/2013/08/25 ... y-clinton/

Rip wrote:I might be awesome if she wasn't known to have a filthy mouth.

http://www.dcclothesline.com/2013/08/25 ... y-clinton/

GreenGoo wrote:

Rip wrote:I might be awesome if she wasn't known to have a filthy mouth.

http://www.dcclothesline.com/2013/08/25 ... y-clinton/

How does that change how awesome it is?

LawBeefaroni wrote:History will ridicule and despise these guys.

I mean while it's a huge loss on paper for me and probably most of us in the west, it's not really a tangible one. But for their "own" people it's a huge, unrecoverable, and very tangible loss.

It's also a huge show of impotency, blowing up stones. Great job guys, I bet the rocks in Dumayr are scared shitless now. Your domination of 2,000 year old stone monuments is unparalleled. What crumbling stack of blocks could possible stand against you now?

GreenGoo wrote:

LawBeefaroni wrote:History will ridicule and despise these guys.

I mean while it's a huge loss on paper for me and probably most of us in the west, it's not really a tangible one. But for their "own" people it's a huge, unrecoverable, and very tangible loss.

It's also a huge show of impotency, blowing up stones. Great job guys, I bet the rocks in Dumayr are scared shitless now. Your domination of 2,000 year old stone monuments is unparalleled. What crumbling stack of blocks could possible stand against you now?

They are despised now.

I feel the opposite about impotency though. When they can reach and destroy history that the whole world mourns, they and the whole world feel they are unstoppable. Because let's face it, we'd prefer they not blow up these stones, and no one is stopping them.

LawBeefaroni wrote:I'm not saying that it's not a big loss. I'm saying it's militarily ill-advised and culturally damaging to their "own" regions only. Inwardly, sure, it's them saying "We're so fucking awesome, we are untouchable!" Outwardly it's a bunch of short-term bluster.

I’ve been researching propaganda issued by the so-called Islamic State for some time now - it’s part of my day job. On a normal day, I’m desensitised. I recognise that what's before me is abhorrent but I rarely experience the full horror of what I'm exposed to. However, on 4 July, one particular IS video caused my normal defence mechanisms to fail. A group of teenage boys was lined up with 25 allegedly pro-Assad soldiers kneeling in front of them. The boys were pointing guns at the back of the soldiers' heads. The stage for this chilling execution was Palmyra's Roman Theatre. As usual, I stopped the film before the act of killing itself.

I've grown used to IS ultraviolence, but this video was different. Different because, at my office desk, the place where I conduct all my research, I have a photograph of myself with my now-wife, dad and step-mum taken at that very same Palmyran theatre almost five years ago. At that time I was living in Syria, and they were some of the last people to visit me before I had to leave the country, which was rapidly descending into civil war.

Back then, I had no idea what was in store.

The Obama administration on Friday abandoned its effort to build a rebel force inside Syria to combat the Islamic State, acknowledging the failure of its $500 million campaign to train thousands of fighters and saying the remaining money would be used to provide lethal aid for groups already engaged in the battle.

Senior officials at the White House and the Pentagon said the strategy to pull fighters out of Syria, teach them advanced skills and return them to face the Islamic State had failed, in part because many of the rebel groups were more focused on a campaign against the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.

But officials said they were trying to adapt their strategy by seeking to identify the leaders of “capable, indigenous forces” in Syria who — after what the officials described as a vigorous vetting process — will for the first time be given military equipment to distribute to their forces engaged in fighting on the ground.

The Iraqi air force struck a convoy of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in western Anbar province close to the Syrian border on Sunday, a military statement said.

The fate of the militant leader, who has declared himself the leader of a caliphate in areas his ultrahardline Sunni group controls in Iraq and Syria, is unknown, the military said. "Iraqi air forces have bombed the convoy of the terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi while he was heading to Karabla to attend a meeting with Daesh commanders," the statement read, using the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

The military said the air force bombed a location where Baghdadi was planning to meet Islamic States commanders. "The location of the meeting was also bombed and many of the group's leaders were killed and wounded. Fate of murderer al-Baghdadi is unknown and he was carried away by a vehicle. His health condition is still unclear," the military said.

The mother of John Gallagher, a Canadian who was killed while fighting against ISIS militants in Syria, says she would like him to be remembered as a passionate defender of human rights. "If people reading about him could take away that there are causes that are worth thinking about and that are worth engaging in," a tearful Valerie Carder told CBC News. "It's not just enough to sit back and go, 'I'm glad I was born in Canada. Being here, there's a responsibility, and if I believe that I should be willing to act on my beliefs.'"

"It's very numbing," Carder said, describing the feeling of having lost her son.

Carder said a journalist informed her Wednesday that her son had been killed and suggested she call the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in London. The organization said Wednesday it was informed Gallagher died when an ISIS militant "detonated himself" during fighting in the al-Hool area of Syria. Carder said the person who answered her call "stated some facts from my son's passport, which matched up with birthplace and birthdate." She said her son believed "a lot of evils around the world have come out of religious fundamentalist attitudes, not merely Islamic, but fundamentalist Christians, fundamentalist anything. "It is fundamentalism that he thought got in the way of human rights, and it's a fight he chose to pursue," Carder said.

Carder, who spoke with her son last Friday, said she'll miss his conversations and his smile. "He's really funny, he's very insightful," she said, her voice breaking.

The Russian plane crash in Egypt last week was not due to technical failures, French aviation officials familiar with the investigation have told the BBC.

Other French officials said the flight data recorder suggested a "violent, sudden" explosion caused the crash, killing all 224 people on board.

Intercepted militant calls indicate a bomb was put in the hold before take-off, according to UK officials.

Militants linked to the Islamic State group (IS) say they downed the plane.

The Metrojet Airbus A321 was flying from Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg when it came down in Sinai last Saturday. Most of the victims were Russian.

The Sinai Province militants have not said how they downed the plane. IS has called for a war against both Russia and the US over their air strikes in Syria.

French air accident investigators cited by AFP news agency said the flight data recorder had shown that "everything was normal during the flight, absolutely normal, and suddenly there was nothing". A similar conclusion was drawn by another investigator speaking to France 2 television.

Investigators of the Russian plane crash in Egypt are "90 percent sure" the noise heard in the final second of a cockpit recording was an explosion caused by a bomb, a member of the investigation team told Reuters on Sunday.

The Airbus (AIR.PA) A321 crashed 23 minutes after taking off from the Sharm al-Sheikh tourist resort eight days ago, killing all 224 passengers and crew. Islamic State militants fighting Egyptian security forces in Sinai said they brought it down.

"The indications and analysis so far of the sound on the black box indicate it was a bomb," said the Egyptian investigation team member, who asked not to be named due to sensitivities. "We are 90 percent sure it was a bomb."

His comments reflect a higher degree of certainty about the cause of the crash than the investigation committee has so far declared in public.

Lead investigator Ayman al-Muqaddam announced on Saturday that the plane appeared to have broken up in mid-air while it was being flown on auto-pilot, and that a noise had been heard in the last second of the cockpit recording. But he said it was too soon to draw conclusions about why the plane crashed.

Confirmation that militants brought down the airliner could have a devastating impact on Egypt's lucrative tourist industry, which has suffered from years of political turmoil and was hit last week when Russia, Turkey and several European countries suspended flights to Sharm al-Sheikh and other destinations.

It could also mark a new strategy by the hardline Islamic State group which holds large parts of Syria and Iraq.

Asked to explain the remaining 10 percent margin of doubt, the investigator declined to elaborate, but Muqaddam cited other possibilities on Saturday including a fuel explosion, metal fatigue in the plane or lithium batteries overheating.

He said debris was scattered over a 13-km (8-mile) area "which is consistent with an in-flight break-up".

Russian communications intercepted by U.S. intelligence agencies showed Russia believed the plane that crashed in Sinai, Egypt, on Oct. 31 was brought down by a bomb, U.S. sources familiar with the matter said on Monday. The intercepts are among pieces of evidence leading U.S. officials to suspect that a device planted on Metrojet Flight 9268 exploded shortly after the Airbus A321 took off from the resort city of Sharm al-Sheikh, the sources said.

All 224 passengers and crew were killed when the plane crashed in the desert on the way to St. Petersburg, Russia. Egypt and Russia have yet to formally announce the cause of the disaster. Both countries dismissed as premature U.S. and British assessments last week that a bomb likely was responsible. Foreign airlines canceled a wave of flights to Egypt's Red Sea resorts following the crash. After initially signaling normal air traffic would proceed, Russia late last week suspended passenger flights to Egypt. Over the weekend, Russia mounted an airlift to repatriate thousands of Russian vacationers who had been stranded in Sinai after regular flights were canceled. Within days of the crash, U.S. and British government sources were suggesting that intercepted communications chatter indicated that the plane had been brought down by a bomb.

The Islamic State's local affiliate, which calls itself the Sinai Province of Islamic State, claimed responsibility for the crash, and indicated it was in retaliation for Russia's military intervention in the Syrian civil war. The group has been fighting the Egyptian army in the Sinai, most of which is a closed military zone, in a conflict that human rights groups say has claimed thousands of civilian lives.

A U.S. government source said on Monday that neither Russia nor Egypt has accepted an offer from the FBI to assist them in investigating the crash. The FBI has offered "forensic assistance" and other unspecified services to both Russia and Egypt, FBI spokesman Joshua Campbell said.

LawBeefaroni wrote:History will ridicule and despise these guys.