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The same President who doesn't have time to attend National Security briefings which could have saved the lives of our Ambassador and 3 other Americans.
He doesn't think he has to adhere to the Constitution..
America Close to War with Syria: Obama Deployed US Troops to Jordan Without Notifying Congress. | Global Research
King Obama strikes again.. Usurps the US Constitution - AGAIN.
The training has been conducted for several months now in an unspecified location, concentrating largely on Sunnis and tribal Bedouins who formerly served as members of the Syrian army, officials told The Associated Press. The forces aren't members of the leading rebel group, the Free Syrian Army, which Washington and others fear may be increasingly coming under the sway of extremist militia groups, including some linked to al-Qaida, they said. The operation is being run by U.S. intelligence and is ongoing, officials said, but those in Washington stressed that the U.S. is providing only nonlethal aid at this point. Others such as Britain and France are involved, they said, though it's unclear whether any Western governments are providing materiel or other direct military support after two years of civil war that according to the United Nations already has killed more than 70,000 people.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly about the program. Officially, the Obama administration has been vague on the subject of what type of military training it may be providing, while insisting that it is doing all it can - short of providing weapons to the rebels or engaging in its own military intervention - to hasten the demise of the Assad family's four-decade dictatorship. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday the U.S. has "provided some logistical nonlethal support that has also come in handy for the Syrian rebels who are, again, fighting a regime that is not hesitating to use the military might of that regime against its own people. "That is something we're going to continue to work to bring to an end," he told reporters.
It's unclear what effect the training has had in the conflict, which has become a quagmire with Assad's regime unable to snuff out the rebellion and Syria's opposition incapable thus far of delivering any serious blow to the ruling government's grip on Damascus and control over much of the country. Some of the Syrians the U.S. is involved with are in turn training other Syrians inside the border, officials said. They declined to provide more information because they said that would go too deep into intelligence matters. Defense Department officials insisted the Pentagon isn't involved with any military training or arms provisions to the Syrian rebels, either directly or indirectly. The CIA declined to comment.
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The first rotation is expected this fall and will include at least a brigade headquarters – “not a brigade in its entirety … that would come over approximately twice a year for 60 days,” Lt. Gen. Donald M. Campbell Jr. said. Another similar contingent is expected to rotate into Europe next spring, he said. There is also the possibility that a combined arms battalion of soldiers of various combat specialties could deploy to Europe as part of the training force, he said. The rotations are part of a larger Army plan to align stateside forces with overseas commands, and come as American forces in Europe continue to draw down. U.S. Army Europe is in the process of inactivating one of its three remaining combat brigades.
By 2015, Campbell said, the Army’s presence in Europe will have consolidated to seven major communities hosting 30,000 soldiers – a drastic reduction from the more than 40 major garrisons and hundreds of thousands of forces stationed in Europe at the end of the Cold War. “I think that’s a good number to be able to do the things that we need to do from a training standpoint, and an exercise standpoint, and a partnership standpoint to continue to meet our obligations to our NATO and our European partners over time,” Campbell said.
The addition of the regionally aligned force — in which units are designated for deployment to specific geographic regions — for training exercises with NATO militaries “sends a very powerful message that Europe still matters and is important.” In the fall iteration, American rotational forces will take part in an exercise testing a NATO headquarters’ readiness to lead the alliance’s response force, which could deploy in the case of war on or near the alliance’s borders. The response force doesn’t have combat capabilities of its own and requires allies to commit forces to it in the case of a contingency.
The exercise, named Steadfast Jazz, will take place at various sites in Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, according to NATO. Campbell said the alliance must be creative in finding ways to maintain the capabilities it’s gained over more than 10 years in Afghanistan as the war there winds down. With smaller budgets, simulations could take the place of some live training, he said. “I believe it’s going to give us an opportunity to really step back and look at training and get better at it.”
http://www.stripes.com/news/europe-training-deployments-survive-budget-ax-1.213409
