The New York Times talks about “deep divisions” within the Obama administration about the U.S. role in the Syrian conflict:
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta acknowledged that he and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, had supported a plan last year to arm carefully vetted Syrian rebels. But it was ultimately vetoed by the White House, Mr. Panetta said, although it was developed by David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director at the time, and backed by Hillary Rodham Clinton, then the secretary of state….
Neither Mr. Panetta nor General Dempsey explained why President Obama did not heed their recommendation. But senior American officials have said that the White House was worried about the risks of becoming more deeply involved in the Syria crisis, including the possibility that weapons could fall into the wrong hands….
The plan that Mr. Petraeus developed, and that Mrs. Clinton supported, called for vetting rebels and training a cadre of fighters who would be supplied with weapons.
The article portrays the “rift” in the government as between those who wanted to arm the rebels and those who were afraid that doing so could result in weapons ending up in the hands of radical jihadists. What is remarkable about the article is the fact that it not once mentions that (1) the CIA has already been coordinating the flow of arms to the rebels, and (2) most of those arms have indeed ended up in the hands of Islamic extremists.
Yet those two facts, both previously reported by the Times, are somehow now irrelevant, worthy not even of a single mention. Why is that, do you think?
