Great. Now We Are Just Throwing Them Weapons Willy Nilly

We are now randomly dropping weapons to fighters in Syria:

After scrapping its vetting program to aid Syrian rebels against the Islamic State, the US military has airdropped tons of ammunition to a new band of fighters while softening its opposition to using its materiel to attack the Syrian leader, Bashar al-Assad.

A spokesman for the US military taskforce said on Tuesday that discussion of lifted restrictions on targeting was a “moot point” since the 50 tons of ammunition airdropped to the Syrian Arab Coalition was not in an area where regime forces fight or Russian pilots overfly.

While the US military previously vetted each Syrian militant receiving US sponsorship, now the program vets only the leadership of rebel groups, raising the prospect that US weaponry could migrate to the broader Syrian civil war. This was the main rationale once used by Barack Obama to limit the US commitment in Syria, before indefinitely “pausing” the effort to build a Syrian anti-Isis force.

The White House announced on Friday that it was pausing the yearlong initiative to build the force that would pledge not to turn its US-provided weapons and training against Assad.

………

Legislators have said the restriction helped account for the paltry numbers of Syrian fighters the $500m program fielded. But Colonel Steve Warren, the spokesman, argued Tuesday it was “too soon” to call the program a failure, contending that the vast majority of the $300m the US spent out of its $500m purse went to weaponry it is sending to its new and mostly unvetted Syrian allies.

“They’re not anywhere near regime forces, they are specifically near Isil, which is who we are interested in fighting,” Warren told reporters on Tuesday.

The Russians are supporting Assad, and in an exercise in dick swinging, we are airdropping weapons, because we have some sort of narcissistic need to lead, even when there is no benefit.

This is insane.