FINALLY.

WASHINGTON — After struggling for years to identify groups in Syria that it can confidently support, the Obama administration on Friday abandoned its effort to build a rebel force inside Syria to combat the Islamic State. It acknowledged the failure of its $500 million campaign to train thousands of fighters and said whatever money remained would be used to provide lethal aid for groups already engaged in the battle.

Senior officials at the White House and the Pentagon said the strategy to pull fighters out of Syria, teach them advanced skills and return them to face the Islamic State had failed, in part because many of the rebel groups were more focused on fighting the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.

We all knew long ago that the "moderate rebels" were a myth.  Let Saudi Arabia fund their own efforts to overthrow Assad and install a Wahabist theocracy/client state.  We shouldn't be serving as their janissaries.

If we need to give any backing to anyone in the Levant, how about to the men and women in the YPG/J?  Hell, not stabbing them in the back would suffice.  Ah, but they're secularist Socialists, so they're evil. Oh, well.