DONATE

BECOME A MEMBER

ABOUT

PITCH US A STORY

New Report Maps Growing Impact Of Ocean

Acidification On Marine Life Worldwide

23

CO M M U NI TY

22

CONTACT

SEC Facing Criticism For Proposed Rules That

Reduce Transparency

22

Report: States Should Make It Easie

Families To Visit Prisoners

F DL M A IN BLOG

OBAMA ADMITS ARMING

MODERATE SYRIAN REBELS HAS
ALWAYS BEEN A FANTASY

Become a Member

Donate to Shadowproof
Sign up to get Shadowproof's
best stories delivered to your
inbox once a week.

11
0

AUG

JANE HAMSHER

Though many have critiqued President Barack Obamas strategy of

Email address:

Sub s cri be

FOLLOW

bypassing a terrorism law to give weapons to so-called moderate

Syrian rebels, few have touched the level of comprehensive
disdain the president himself has with his own policy.
The weapons the Obama Administration sent to Syria famously
ended up in the hands of ISIS and Al Qaeda. Some of those weapons
are likely being used now in Iraq against government forces and to
commit the kind of massacres President Obama ordered American
air power in to try and stop.

LATEST POSTS
REPUBLICAN
PRESIDENTIAL
CANDIDATES: MUSICAL
SATIRE IN LIMERICKS
(VIDEO)

In an interview with Thomas Friedman of The New York Times,

Obama not only declined to defend his policy of giving weapons to

U.S. IMMIGRATION
PRISONS LACK
OVERSIGHT,
RE-TRAUMATIZE
REFUGEES

the Syrian rebels but offered a withering critique of his policy and
the reasoning behind it.

With respect to Syria, said the president, the notion that

arming the rebels would have made a difference has

always been a fantasy. This idea that we could provide

some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what

HACKING THE CIA

DIRECTORS AOL
ACCOUNT WAS A
POLITICAL ACT

was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors,

farmers, pharmacists and so forth, and that they were going
to be able to battle not only a well-armed state but also a

well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, a battlehardened Hezbollah, that was never in the cards.

PHARMA CEO WHO

SAID HE ONLY CARES
ABOUT
SHAREHOLDERS LOSES
THEM MONEY

Even now, the president said, the administration has

difficulty finding, training and arming a sufficient cadre of
secular Syrian rebels: Theres not as much capacity as

you would hope.

NEW REPORT MAPS

GROWING IMPACT OF
OCEAN ACIDIFICATION
ON MARINE LIFE
WORLDWIDE

Pardon me while I pick my jaw up off the floor. It was President

Obama who, despite warnings and protests from numerous groups,
bypassed a law against arming terrorists to give weapons to the
Syrian rebels. Now it was all a fantasy and had no hope of
working?

While it is nice to see President Obama acknowledge reality, it

leaves more questions than answers as to why it was done in the
first place. Not to mention that it might still be happening.

FEATURED REPORTING

It is bad enough to have a president that makes bad decisions

thinking they will turn out well, but making bad decisions and
knowing the objective is impossible is really a problem.

CO M M U NI TY

THE BU LLP EN
F E AT UR E S

OBAMA ADMITS ARMING

ALBUMS OF THE 2010S (SO FAR)
MODERATE SYRIAN REBELS HAS
ALWAYS BEEN A FANTASY

TO P P O S T S

G A M IN G T H E SY S T E M

TO P PO ST S

JAILHOUSE DOCTORS RECORD RAISES

ABOUT PRIVATE INMATE HEALTH CARE

TRENDING