...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A cautionary tale of cost-benefit analysis....
allies signed last week, an official said.
"I can say that the train-and-equip (program) will begin as of March 1," Tanju Bilgic, front man for the Turkish foreign ministry, was quoted as saying by the state-run Anatolia news agency.
After several months of negotiations, Ankara and Washington signed an agreement on February 19 to train and arm Syria's anti-regime fighters.
Turkey, an outspoken critic of Syrian
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Light of the Alawites...
, hopes rebel factions to be trained will battle the regime in Damascus as well as forces of Evil from the Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
(IS) group who have seized large swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria right up to the Turkish border.
The U.S. government hopes the first trained rebel forces will be operational by the end of the year.
The goal is to train more than 5,000 Syrians in the first year of the program, and a total of 15,000 over a three-year period.