$9 million per fighter

Nancy A. Youssef writes in The Daily Beast,

Even the Pentagon was wincing as a top general fumbled the most basic questions about the Obama administration’s strategy to combat ISIS.

Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, commander of U.S. Central Command

In the span of two hours, a cornerstone of the U.S. strategy toward the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Iraq and Syria crumbled—loudly, and in public.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the general in charge of the war effort made clear that the U.S. strategy for arming “moderate” Syrian fighters had failed. Of the thousands of fighters they had hoped to train, just “four or five” are currently in the fight in Syria.

...The U.S. military has spent $43 million of the $500 million allotted by Congress, or roughly $9 million per fighter. (The U.S. had originally planned to have 5,400 fighters trained by now.)

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