US has ‘no plan at all’ in Syria: Congressman

A US congressman says a recent trip to American military bases in the Middle East has given him the impression that Washington has “no plan at all” in Syria.

“I left the trip with more faith in the plan as it relates to Iraq, and I will say, unfortunately, as far as the situation in places like Syria and Libya, there really is no plan at all,” Rep. Lee Zeldin said in a radio interview on Sunday.

“In some respects, there are reasons to be happier, others a little bit more concerned depending on what part of the complicated map you’re looking at,” the New York Republican added.

Zeldin, an Iraq War veteran who is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, led a congressional delegation to Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, and Qatar over the Christmas holiday. The bipartisan delegation met with American troops and held briefings with senior military and diplomatic officials in those countries.

In a statement earlier this week, Zeldin said “things are moving a little better in Iraq,” but added that the situation is “very tenuous” and “could turn in the opposite direction quickly.”

“The bad news is that things are a lot worse in Syria and Libya and there really isn't much of a plan at all,” the congressman said in the release.

The Obama administration has come under withering criticism from Congress for the lack of a clear strategy in Syria 15 months after a US-led coalition launched an air campaign in the country purportedly to counter the Daesh (ISIL) terrorist group.

The Pentagon also oversaw a $500-million program to train and arm “moderate” militants battling the Syrian government and ISIL terrorists.

In October, the Pentagon halted the “train-and-equip” program, admitting that it had only succeeded in training a “handful” of recruits.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the Obama administration had looked for “cracks” inside the Syrian government in an effort to encourage a coup against President Bashar al-Assad soon after the conflict began in 2011.

President Barack Obama ignored warnings from his top military and intelligence advisers that the fall of the Assad government would lead to “chaos” and extremist militants taking over the country, according to a Pulitzer prize-winning American journalist.

"Barack Obama's repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office -- and that there are 'moderate' rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him -- has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon's Joint Staff," Seymour Hersh wrote in the January 7, 2016 edition of the London Review of Books.

Hersh cited a highly-classified report put together in 2013 by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff which warned the White House about the dire consequences of the push to topple the Assad government.

US officials have quietly acknowledged that Russia’s military campaign against terror groups in Syria, launched on September 30, 2015, has been successful and achieved Moscow’s central goal of stabilizing the Syrian government, according to Reuters.

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