Obama opposed arming the Syrian rebels

Here's a bit of news I found fascinating: Even though Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, CIA Director David Petraeus and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta all backed the idea of arming rebels in Syria, President Obama decided against this course of action.

I had assumed that the U.S. was covertly arming the rebels, either directly or through another country. (The president could issue a "Finding" allowing the CIA to do this, or instruct the Pentagon to supply the rebels using a Presidential Decision Directive.) I had assumed that President Obama had authorized such a program because that's what the U.S. has done historically even when it says it is staying out of conflicts.

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Marc Ambinder

Marc Ambinder is TheWeek.com's editor-at-large. He is the author, with D.B. Grady, of The Command and Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry. Marc is also a contributing editor for The Atlantic and GQ. Formerly, he served as White House correspondent for National Journal, chief political consultant for CBS News, and politics editor at The Atlantic. Marc is a 2001 graduate of Harvard. He is married to Michael Park, a corporate strategy consultant, and lives in Los Angeles.