Democrat Senator Eviscerates Pres Obama Plan to Arm ‘Moderate’ Syrian Rebels

It makes no sense to me…you can’t sell this stuff!

(THE//INTERCEPT) West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin on Tuesday scathingly criticized a key element of the Obama administration’s strategy to confront the Islamic State, saying that history has shown that training local forces doesn’t work.
“How can I go home to West Virginia and make sense out of this at all?” he asked Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey at a Senate Armed Services Committee. (Must see video)

I have a hard time with all of this… When I go home to West Virginia,… people say: What do you expect to be different than what you have done in that region of the world for 13 years? If money or military might hasn’t changed it, what makes you think you can change it now?

And when you look at the money we spent — $20 billion trying to build up an army in Iraq — and the first time they were tested they ran, turned over the arsenal that we equipped them with and is now being used against us…. And then when you look at what we have done in that part of the world: Total of Iraq, $818 billion spent — those are the figures I have — $747 [billion] in Afghanistan and growing; [total[ $1.6 trillion to date and growing — 4,400 lives lost in Iraq, 36,000 wounde; 2,200 lives in Afghanistan and 21,000 wounded.

Sen. Manchin then divided the $500 million President Obama has said he want Congress to spend on arming and training Syrian rebels by the 5,000 rebels Manchin said it would be spent on.

At $100,000 per person if my math is correct — $500 million for 5,000, correct? So that’s $100,000 per person that we are supposed to do. The only thing I know we are sure of is that training and those weapons will probably be used against us at some time in the future…