U.S. Quietly Shelving Its $500 Million Syrian Rebel Army

Goran Tomasevic/Reuters

Nancy A. Youssef, Daily Beast: U.S. Shelves Its $500M Syrian Rebel Army

The Obama administration has itself a new proxy force to fight ISIS—but not the rebel army it’s committed half a billion dollars to assemble.

The Obama administration is still publicly counting on a $500 million rebel army to beat ISIS in Syria. But privately, the Pentagon brass long ago moved past its own proxy force, The Daily Beast has learned. They’ve found another group to fight the self-proclaimed Islamic State instead.

In recent weeks, the handful of fighters in the administration-backed rebel army—the so-called “New Syrian Force”—have been killed, kidnapped, or fallen off the proverbial radar. But the Pentagon maintained a brave face, even after these 54 fighters (out of what was supposed to be a total of 15,000) were decimated by Islamist attacks. “We continue to see volunteers want to be a part of this program,” Air Force Colonel Pat Ryder, a Defense Department spokesman, told reporters Friday.

WNU Editor: Talk about shelving this U.S. backed Syrian rebel group has been making the rounds for the past few days .... Pentagon reviewing program to train Syrian rebels (CNN). Personally .... I find all of this speculation moot. This Pentagon program is dead .... it is just that no one wants to assume the bad PR from making this fact public.