Just for the record. Three days ago I http://www.moonofalabama.org/2013/02/syria-kerry-does-more-of-the-same.html">wrote:
There are U.S. special forces on the Jordan boarder with Syria. They will likely have trained the insurgents on their new weapons.
Today the New York Times writes:
On Wednesday, senior administration officials said that a training mission for the rebels at a base in the region, which is already under way, represented the deepest American involvement yet in the Syrian conflict, though the size and scope of the mission is not clear, nor is its host country.
That training mission has been underway since the U.S. sent special forces to the Syrian border in Jordan more than five month ago. We can be sure that Jordan special forces and the Turkish army have also trained some of the insurgents since quite early in the conflict. The "color revolution" media training for the insurgency propaganda was started even before the insurgency and was done, like in other countries, by U.S. financed groups.
I do not believe that such training has much value. The U.S. mindset on which such training is based does not translate well into other societies. Just look at "U.S. trained" troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. If the going gets tough they always resort to their own ways of fighting. Less elegant and less wasteful but effective against U.S. style troops. It is more difficult for them to fight against troops from their own society.
