Last September, President Barack Obama outlined a strategy to, “degrade and destroy” the terrorist group known as ISIS.
Part of that plan included training moderate Syrian rebels (like those from the Free Syrian Army) to fight against the self-proclaimed Islamic State. The U.S. government allocated half a billion dollars to cover the costs of this training.
Now, members of Congress are wondering where in the world all that money went. On Wednesday, General Lloyd Austin, commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate armed services committee that so far, the U.S. has only managed to train, “four of five” anti-ISIS fighters in Syria.
“The program is much smaller than we hoped,” said Christine Wormuth, the Pentagon’s policy chief, in an interview with The Guardian. Wormuth added that there are another 100-120 fighters currently going through training.
Still, that’s a far cry from the 5,000 fighters that the Pentagon projected would be trained by now when it described the war effort last November.
Sept. 16, 2015: Gen. Lloyd Austin III, commander of U.S. Central Command, and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Christine Wormuth testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee about the U.S. military’s ongoing operations against ISIS (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
General Austin’s revelations drew ire and criticism from senators on both sides of the political spectrum.
“It’s time for a new plan,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri. McCaskill also balked at the Defense Department’s request for an additional $600 million in funding for more training.
Austin’s testimony was also met with outrage by Republican Senator John McCain, who denounced the administration’s strategy against ISIS as, “a debacle”.
The general admitted that there has been, “slow movement at the tactical level,” but defended the administration’s strategy against ISIS as a whole. “There haven’t been any dramatic gains on either side,” Austin said, despite the fact that ISIS militants have captured the Iraqi city of Ramadi and the Syrian city of Palmyra since the start of 2015.
Austin is also dealing with another controversy in regards to the war against ISIS: dozens of intelligence analysts saying that their assessments of the war effort have been consistently watered down by senior officials who want to paint a more optimistic picture of the conflict.
When he was questioned about this issue, General Austin said that it would be, “premature and inappropriate” to talk about the ongoing investigation into the analysts’ claims. He added, however, that the Senators could, “be assured I will take the appropriate action.”
Read more from The Guardian.