House Dem: Obama’s Syria plan is ‘lame’

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, called President Obama’s plan to arm Syrian rebels to combat Islamic militants “lame.”

Speier, one of 85 House Democrats who voted against the measure passed by the House and Senate this week, said that training up to 5,000 members of the Free Syrian Army to combat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is “not a plan.”

{mosads}”There are many within the establishment, former generals, who said it was lame, actually, that if you were going to do it you need to do at least 15,000 [troops],” Speier said Friday on MSNBC.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Thursday defended the administration’s plan to provide small arms to 5,000 Syrian rebels going up against as many as 30,000 ISIS fighters.

“The goal is not to achieve numerical parity with ISIL, but to ensure that moderate Syrian forces are superior fighters trained by units,” Hagel said, using an alternative name for the group. 

Speier, who has warned of further escalation against ISIS, said the U.S. moved “too quickly” without getting other countries to put boots on the ground in Syria to defeat ISIS. 

She also said the U.S. needs to “think twice” about the system used to vet members of the Iraqi army that fled or joined ISIS in that country.

“I think that there were still a lot of questions that were unanswered,” she said. “There wasn’t a plan; there wasn’t an exit strategy.”