$1 billion a year from us to Syrian jihadis.

That’s per year.

As the author says, “possibly the largest CIA covert program in history.”

Meanwhile, mainstream media has been content to float the falsehood that President Obama's legacy is that he "stayed out" of Syria, instead merely approving some negligible level of aid to so-called "moderate" rebels who were fighting both Assad and (supposedly) the Islamic State. Rhodes has himself in prior interviews attempted to portray Obama as wisely staying "on the sidelines" in Syria.

But as we've pointed out many times over the years, this narrative ignores and seeks to whitewash possibly the largest CIA covert program in history, started by Obama, which armed and funded a jihadist insurgency bent of overthrowing Assad to the tune of $1 billion a year (one-fifteenth of the CIA’s publicly known budget according to leaked Edward Snowden documents revealed by the Washington Post).

It also ignores the well established fact, documented in both US intelligence reports and authenticated battlefield footage, that ISIS and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) jointly fought under a single US-backed command structure during the early years of the war in Syria, even as late as throughout 2013 — something confirmed by University of Oklahoma professor Joshua Landis, widely considered to be the world's foremost expert on Syria.^[1]

Somebody please explain to me why the U.S. thinks it has any claim to moral leadership of even a Church spaghetti supper let alone why “we” should lead a uni-polar world.

But, oh yes, it’s Assad who’s the tainted one. He has to go because he’s a “brutal dictator.” That would be the man who won election to his present office, will do so again, and has the support of Sunnis, Alawites, Christians, Yazidis, Druze, and Montagnards for all I know.

Notes
^[1] "Ben Rhodes Admits Obama Armed Jihadists In Syria In Bombshell Interview." By Tyler Durden, ZeroHedge, 6/24/18 (formatting and links removed).