U.S. Deploys Mighty Army of “4 or 5” Soldiers to “Degrade” Islamic State aka ISIS

Yes, literally 4 or 5 men. Not 4 or 5 divisions, or brigades, or regiments, or battalions. Not even 4 or 5 companies or platoons or squads. Four or five individual fighters.

This is according to the Congressional testimony on September 16th of the ultimate commander of those “4 or 5” men, U.S. Army General Lloyd Austin, head of the so-called “Central Command,” the U.S. military command that enforces U.S. domination (or attempts to) over a large geographical area centered around the Arabian Peninsula oil sheikdoms and including Egypt, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and as far north as Kazakhstan. [See official Pentagon map below.] [1]

"It's a small number," Austin trenchantly observed. Ah, finally! A statement by a U.S. officer that is indisputably true, for a change.

Austin was testifying to the Senate Armed Services Committee, whose members were vocally underwhelmed by the report. [2]

But take heart! “Defense” Undersecretary for Policy Christine Wormuth informed the Senators that as many as 100 trainees might be ready hurl themselves against IS by the end of the year. (Or maybe not.)

The U.S. demands that its Syrian recruits refrain from fighting the forces of the tyrant Bashar al-Assad, and instead aim their guns only at the U.S.' current enemy, Islamic State. (The U.S. government insists on referring to IS by an older name, ISIL. [3]) This absurd insistence, coupled with U.S. paranoia about weeding out “extremists,” has made the process of creating this phantom army slow-going.

It bears remembering that on July 31^th, the first group of 54 U.S.-puppet anti-IS fighters were destroyed in Syria by the Al-Nusra front, an Al-Qaeda affiliate. (Gee, that wasn't supposed to happen!)

Price so far: $42 million. A half a billion bucks is budgeted for this quixotic public relations stunt.

But wait! In a funny coincidence, just five days after Central Commander Austin's poorly-received Senate testimony, Central Command issued a press release on September 21^th trumpeting the addition of 70 “graduates” of the training program to the fight. (You gotta wonder how well they've been trained!) [4]

Recall that earlier this year Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama announced his plans to “degrade” ISIL, and plans were announced to create a Syrian puppet force of 5,400 fighters for this purpose. (The U.S. president is designated by the U.S. Constitution the commander in chief of the U.S. Armed Forces.) Now we have to try and puzzle out whether Obama meant it, and failed, or was that just another of his patented con jobs where he deceives people. (He did this type of thing even before becoming president, even as he was running in 2008, when as a U.S. Senator he vowed to filibuster a bill that would grant immunity from lawsuits to AT&T- and all phone companies- for illegally permitting warrantless NSA surveillance using their facilities. Well, not only did he NOT filibuster the bill, he voted FOR it. There are many more examples since.)

With Obama, he always tries to hide what he's actually doing, while saying the opposite. He's done it with prison “reform,” where he recently launched a propaganda campaign in which he bloviates about how “we” lock up too many people (while he refuses to order the prosecutors he controls to stop pushing for draconian sentences, stop persecuting medical marijuana stores, and has used his presidential pardon and commutation authority to free fewer than 100 prisoners- vs. the 1,000 plus the “autocratic” Putin has freed). At the exact same time he gives Shell Oil the go-ahead to drill in the Arctic, he gives a speech about climate change! The man is completely shameless.

So with such a cynical con man, it can be tricky figuring out if he really intended to do something (did he really intend to close the military prison and torture center at Guantanamo Bay?) and failed, or was it all a sham from the get-go?

Obama certainly had political reasons to pretend to fight ISIS. Since Republicans apparently want a U.S. invasion (but they coyly and cynically don't say so overtly) a “plan” to field a 5,400 man army of Syrian mercenaries was a way to deflect political heat off himself. We may never know the truth, but probably someday enough inside info to come out to correctly analyze it.


1] The Wikipedia entry on the U.S. Central Command has basic facts about its creation, history, commanders, alleged purposes, and so on. It's evident from the list of commanders (a veritable Rogues' Gallery of infamous mass killers) that the post is a stepping-stone to higher positions. A number went on to positions on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including Chairman, and one, the much-feted David Petraeus, became a CIA Director.

2] See for example “You Can Literally Count the Number of U.S.-Trained Syrians Fighting ISIS on One Hand: Lawmakers slammed the U.S. plan to defeat the Islamic State group in a heated Capitol Hill hearing,” U.S. News & World Report, September 16, 2015.

3] “Islamic State” is the name of a self-declared “caliphate,” a horrible, barbaric, primitive state that is supposed to represent perfection, created by the terrorist cult that formerly went by the names Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or of ash-Sham (ISIS) and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). It is a mutation of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, itself a mutation of the original Al-Qaeda. Through each mutation of these Islamofascist spawns of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the trap the U.S. set for the U.S.S.R. in Afghanistan beginning in 1979, the resulting group has become more vicious, barbaric, and intolerant. Its Salafist ideology comes from the Saudi-promoted Wahhabi sect of Sunni Islam.

4] “Sept.21: Additional new Syrian forces deployed to Syria, U.S. Central Command, September 21, 2015 RELEASE #20150902 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.” The propaganda bulletin starts with a ludicrous boast, and is written in the manner of all official U.S. military propaganda, namely relentlessly upbeat, which oftentimes reads as satire worthy of Joseph Heller's classic novel Catch-22.

Here's what it says:

TAMPA, Fla.– [Yes, that's where their HQ is] Approximately 70 graduates of the Counter-ISIL Coalition's Syria Train and Equip program have successfully re-entered Syria complete with their weapons and equipment and are currently operating as New Syrian Forces.

With support from the Coalition, the NSF will fight alongside vetted opposition forces and employ their training and equipment acquired through the T&E program to enhance the efforts of these larger units already in the fight against ISIL.

The contributions of the NSF will be additive to those already being made in Syria by tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and other anti-ISIL forces, who have re-secured more than 17,000 sq. km. of territory previously held by ISIL, along with critical border crossing points between Syria and Turkey. While the NSF do not operate under the command and control of the Coalition, we will continue to support and enable them as part of the ongoing campaign to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL.

As the U.S. has consistently stiffed the Kurds, that bit about the “contribution” of the Syrian Kurds etc. is particularly galling. I hope the Kurds don't read it. It would be a bitter pill indeed. And it's really a bad joke to call 70 fighters an “additive contribution.” It's virtually useless. What's going on here is others are doing the fighting and dying, while the U.S. conducts half-assed airstrikes and talks about fielding a mythical force of “moderate Syrians” who are barred from fighting the dictator that the Syrian people rose up against in the first place.

U.S. Central Command map of “CENTCOM Area of Responsibility” 

(for imposing U.S. Imperialist “interests”).