Iraq Atrocity Exposes US Never Learns From Failed Training Blowback

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — On Thursday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that an Iraqi army division trained by the US government allegedly executed several dozen prisoners in Mosul’s Old City. Two international observers detailed the summary killings of four people by the Iraqi army’s 16th Division in mid-July 2017, and saw evidence that the unit had executed many more people, including a boy, HRW said.

"Because they think it works," Armstrong said when asked why the United States continues to push these training programs despite previous failures. "Or, at least, each new bureaucratic generation thinks it does. But it doesn't."

The incident confirms a repeated pattern that reflects short term thinking in the US military bureaucracy but it always proves to be counter-productive and alienates populations rather than winning their trust, Armstrong said.

Armstrong said the decision to scrap the Syria opposition training program and the Iraq atrocities report showed that the decades-long US strategy of supporting radical Islamic forces, first against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and more recently against Syria and Iran had failed.

"What is emerging… is the recognition of the failure of the PNAC [Project for a New American Century]-Brzezinski strategy which is generating the exact opposite of what it was supposed to produce," Armstrong said.

Former US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski who died in May, was for more than 40 years an outspoken advocate of supporting Islamist forces against first the Soviet Union and then against other targets and countries in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Current President Donald Trump was critical of such policies during his 2016 election campaign and genuinely wants to shut them down, but he faces powerful opposition from the intelligence agencies and military in the US deep state, Armstrong warned.

"[It is] still too early to say [if Trump can change policy]: Turning the USS Ship of State around is a big job and I don't think the Captain has full control of the engine room," he pointed out.

US efforts to dismantle the unified nation of Syria had been going on a long time and were related to efforts to control pipelines across the Fertile Crescent region that carried oil from the Persian Gulf states to the West, Armstrong explained.

"The Syria project is long-standing, is connected with the gas pipeline from Qatar to Europe which takes us deep into the PNAC desire to break Russia. We also connect to Israel-Saudi Arabia interests to weaken Iran. So there is a lot of background," he said.

The Human Rights Watch allegation followed reports last week that President Donald Trump has decided to end the half a billion dollar per year CIA training problem for Syrian opposition groups seeking to topple the government of President Bashar Assad.