Are you uncomfortable with the CIA training Syrian rebels? Good news.

[cthulu2016]

Soon they won't have to.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is considering a plan to use U.S. military trainers to help increase the capabilities of the Syrian rebels, in a move that would greatly expand the current CIA training being done quietly in Jordan, U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Any training would take place outside Syria, and one possible location would be Jordan.

The officials said no decision had been made, but that discussions were going on at high levels of the government. It comes as the Obama administration prods Congress to authorize limited military strikes against the Syrian government in retaliation for a deadly Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack.

The proposal to use the U.S. military to train the rebels — something the administration has resisted through more than two years of civil war — would answer the demands of some lawmakers, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to do more to train and equip the Syrian opposition.

Read more: http://www.startribune.com/politics/national/222583301.html

[jakeXT]

1. At least it's open now ... unlike with Bush/Cheney, but then again the cat is out of the bag

Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.

A senior member of the House Appropriations Committee told me that he had heard about the new strategy, but felt that he and his colleagues had not been adequately briefed. “We haven’t got any of this,” he said. “We ask for anything going on, and they say there’s nothing. And when we ask specific questions they say, ‘We’re going to get back to you.’ It’s so frustrating.”
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/03/05/070305fa_fact_hersh?currentPage=all