Posted on 06/30/2016 12:29:40 AM PDT by Cronos
The U.S. military’s efforts to confront the Islamic State in Syria suffered another setback Wednesday after the militants routed the only group to have survived intact an ill-fated Pentagon program to train and equip moderate rebels last year.
The U.S.-backed New Syrian Army said it was forced to withdraw its forces to its base at Tanf near the Jordanian border after launching what to have been a poorly conceived offensive aimed at capturing the strategically important eastern Syrian town of Abu Kamal on the Syrian-Iraqi border.
Islamic State claims published by its Amaq news agency that its fighters had killed 40 members of the group and captured 15 could not be independently confirmed and appeared to be exaggerated. Islamic State social media accounts posted photographs and videos showing brutalized bodies, the beheading of one fighter and small quantities of captured, U.S.- supplied weaponry.
...The rout also raised further questions about the United States’ strategy in Syria at a time when the Islamic State’s defenses are crumbling on multiple fronts elsewhere across its self-proclaimed caliphate. On Monday, Iraqi security forces finished driving the militants from the symbolically important town of Fallujah 45 miles west of Baghdad, and in recent weeks the Islamic State has been forced to retreat in several key locations of northeastern Syria by the predominantly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Unless the New Syrian Army can regroup soon and launch another offensive, “they will be finished,” said Michael Horowitz, a senior analyst at the Levantine Group security consultancy. And if it is, he said, U.S. strategy will become even more reliant on Syria’s Kurds, who have proved to be an effective fighting force but are regarded with deep distrust by most of the Syrian Arabs living in areas still controlled by the Islamic State.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
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Note the quantities of captured, U.S.- supplied weaponry. -- Obama is supplying the IslamicState with weaponryr
Evidently mooselimb bro-hood make sucky fighters.
If the US had only supplied them with suicide belts, the results would have been different!
Why do we hear Trump saying we're tired of losing all the time?
Standard procedure, we deliver weapons to McCain’s “good guys” and they deliver the weapons to IS. Like clockwork.
Whatcha gonna tell us this time treasonous barta*d Islamic Muslim Obama!
Not to worry Russia will kill the ISIS fighters in Syria.
This can’t be true. Yesterday we were told the U.S. killed 250 insurgents in 2 clown cars.
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