Barack Obama: Vladimir Putin not leading in Syria fight
President Obama: Russia facing a 'quagmire' in Syria 02:22
(CNN)President
Barack Obama pushed back against claims that Vladimir Putin's recent
military action in Syria is "challenging" American leadership in the
middle East.
"If you think that
running your economy into the ground and having to send troops in, in
order to prop up your only ally is leadership, then we've got a
different definition of leadership," Obama told CBS News' Steve Kroft
during an interview that aired on "60 Minutes" on Sunday.
Kroft
also asked Obama if he had any indication while meeting with Putin at
the United Nations General Assembly that Russia was going to launch
airstrikes in Syria the following day, to which President Obama answered
that there was "pretty good intelligence".
"We knew that he was planning to -- provide the military assistance
that Assad was needing because they were nervous about -- a potential
imminent collapse of the regime."
In
the interview Obama also addressed the faltering Syrian rebel training
program saying, "there's no doubt that it did not work."
The
interview was taped Tuesday prior to the announcement from the
Department of Defense that the program was being suspended Friday.
"One
of the challenges that I've had throughout this -- heartbreaking
situation inside of Syria is, is that -- you'll have people insist that,
you know, all you have to do is send in a few -- you know, truckloads
full of arms and people are ready to fight. And then when you start a
train and equip program and it doesn't work, then people say, 'Well, why
didn't it work?'"
Obama added that
the situation in Syria is volatile and complicated with many players and
there are no "silver bullets" to easily solve the problems.
end quote from:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/11/politics/barack-obama-60-minutes-vladimir-putin/index.html
No comments:
Post a Comment