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Seymour Hersh on US intelligence sharing in the Syrian war

Groundbreaking investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has published a stunning expose of the internal conflicts in the Obama Administration over the president’s Syria strategy. While Obama believe that getting rid of Bashar al-Assad is the only way forward in Syria, Hersh’s piece reveals that a significant number of Obama’s military advisers think that doing so will hand the country to ISIS. Read an excerpt below, or the full piece at the London Review of Books:

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. Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administration’s fixation on Assad’s primary ally, Vladimir Putin. In their view, Obama is captive to Cold War thinking about Russia and China, and hasn’t adjusted his stance on Syria to the fact both countries share Washington’s anxiety about the spread of terrorism in and beyond Syria; like Washington, they believe that Islamic State must be stopped.