"WASHINGTON - The Central Intelligence Agency has run guns to insurgencies across the world during its 67-year history - from Angola to Nicaragua to Cuba. The continuing C.I.A. effort to train Syrian rebels is just the latest example of an American president becoming enticed by the prospect of using the spy agency to covertly arm and train rebel groups.

An internal C.I.A. study has found that it rarely works.

The still-classified review, one of several C.I.A. studies commissioned in 2012 and 2013 in the midst of the Obama administration's protracted debate about whether to wade into the Syrian civil war, concluded that many past attempts by the agency to arm foreign forces covertly had a minimal impact on the long-term outcome of a conflict. They were even less effective, the report found, when the militias fought without any direct American support on the ground.

A rebel leader, Sheikh Tawfiq Shahabuddin, right, on Monday in Reyhanli, Turkey. "The international position has to be to fight all kinds of terrorism," he said.U.S. Goal Is to Make Syrian Rebels ViableSEPT. 18, 2014
Free Syrian Army fighters inside a house in Aleppo last week. The United States has been helping Arab governments and Turkey send arms to the rebels.Arms Airlift to Syrian Rebels Expands, With C.I.A. AidMARCH 24, 2013
C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian RebelsJUNE 21, 2012
The findings of the study, described in recent weeks by current and former American government officials, were presented in the White House Situation Room and led to deep skepticism among some senior Obama administration officials about the wisdom of arming and training members of a fractured Syrian opposition."

...

"One of the things that Obama wanted to know was: Did this ever work?" said one former senior administration official who participated in the debate and spoke anonymously because he was discussing a classified report. The C.I.A. report, he said, "was pretty dour in its conclusions."

...

"You need some really good, loyal people on the ground ready to fight."

NYT




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"The truth is incontrovertible.
malice may attack it,
ignorance may deride it,
but in the end,
there it is." -Sir Winston Churchill

It worked great in Afghanistan. Will it work against ISIS at this point in time? Of course not. We have the PiC in charge. That dud is so incompetent that he could screw up the laws of physics

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I :heart; Q

Yea, Afghanistan turned out just great.
Peace and prosperity for all.


broken record
repeat
boring

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"The truth is incontrovertible.
malice may attack it,
ignorance may deride it,
but in the end,
there it is." -Sir Winston Churchill

Yep, the CIA, working with SF and air power, used indigenous peoples to topple the Taliban. It was ordered by and executed under George Bush. It was a brilliant campaign by all accounts.

The PiC's adminstration has shown no ability to do anything compentently, especially militarily. The PiC, of course, is in the process of losing Afghanistan.

I know your type will ignore the facts, as the facts show Bush did a great job and the PiC is a disaster. Progs cannot give up their shibolleths, as doing so would be to turn their backs on their substitute religion. I know there is no hope for progs. But, most people want to know the facts and I provide them. Me and thousands have been doing that for 6 years and we have finally gotten through to people. The vast majority of Americans now understand that the PiC is supremely incompetent and cannot be trusted with so much as ordering a pizza.

So carry on with your suspension of reality. But know that I will be here to provide the truth for those who seek it.

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I :heart; Q

que?

Yup, read up on it. Reading is a good way to learn about what is going on in this world. Progs should give it a whirl. Believe it or not, one does not adequately inform one's self by only watching the Comedy Channel. This book provides a good account - The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Forged a New Afghanistan

I practice what I preach in this regard. That is why I can shoot down any prog argument with ease.

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I :heart; Q

oh yeah baby, you know you want it.

We all know you do!

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The REAL truth is....both of the forum idiots are OWNED.
-BOTH of them have no clue who their owner is.
-They are both card carrying narcissists.
^These are PROVED facts.

I'm pretty sure the CIA started the paved the way for the Taliban to gain power in the first place. Same story in Iran. 

 

The CIA could dissapper completely and the USA would be no worse for the wear. 

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Two Finger Ring 

Dumb prog. Always against the military and CIA.

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I :heart; Q

 

 

 

Typical boomer

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Two Finger Ring 

I was really thinking more about the first CIA war in Afghanistan, as relevant to this article, and thought you were too tpap.
Reagan's war, or "Charlie Wilson's War" was an example of the rare way such a thing can succeed, as there was a CIA infusion of weapons and advisers AND dedicated local component on the ground who were willing to fight. They won.

The down side was that it turned out that the best of those fighters were so willing to fight because they were religious wack job extremists and not capable of rational governance once they won. So we got as an eventual result, the Taliban, Al Queda sanctuaries and 911. Net negative result. Like much of what Reagan did.

Bush's junior's ill planned, failed and eventually abandoned effort to fix that decades later was a whole different sort of thing.

-------------------------
"The truth is incontrovertible.
malice may attack it,
ignorance may deride it,
but in the end,
there it is." -Sir Winston Churchill

Edited: 10/17/2014 at 11:29 AM by WG

"Has the CIA failed repeatedly to meet its covert goals? Actually, the problem has been exactly the reverse. With the exception of the Bay of Pigs, the agency has succeeded repeatedly, sometimes spectacularly. In Afghanistan in the 1980s "the CIA arms for the mujahedin won the final and decisive battle of the Cold War, liberating Eastern Europe and destroying the USSR," says CIA veteran Bruce Riedel, now at the Brookings Institute. "That's victory by any measure. Of course the war had other long term consequences, but the CIA accomplished what the White House wanted, a Russian Vietnam."

Long-term consequences indeed. What happened again and again after the agency eliminated or helped to neutralize the presumed bad guys was the spectacle of their replacements turning out to be as bad or worse. But for those tragic policy decisions one must blame every president dating back to Dwight D. Eisenhower."

The CIA's Wrong: Arming Rebels Works

-------------------------
"The truth is incontrovertible.
malice may attack it,
ignorance may deride it,
but in the end,
there it is." -Sir Winston Churchill

Whoa! Agree with Barney on something about the CIA! Will wonders never cease?! Not sure about if they should disappear, but their mission sure needs to change. Nice substantiation of your argument there mate! THAT...I can deal with.

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The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness -
John Kenneth Galbraith

It's what comes after they have done their work.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/pos..._and_a_blowback_world/