Defense Secretary Ash Carter caused a stir Tuesday when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the $500 million program to train and equip “moderate” Syrian rebels to take on the Islamic State had so far yielded just 60 vetted candidates. 
 
 Republicans quickly pounced on the number — far short of a goal for at least 5,400 fighters in the first year — as evidence that President Barack Obama’s strategy for defeating the terrorist group isn’t working, a day after the president defended the plan at a rare Pentagon press briefing. And Democrats quickly went into damage-control mode, noting there are valid reasons the number is so small. 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) let Carter know during the Senate hearing that his remark had caused a ruckus on cable news, saying he’d just stepped out of the hearing for an appearance on CNN, and all the interviewer wanted to talk about, Nelson said, was Carter’s statement. 
 
 The Pentagon chief acknowledged he’d caused a firestorm, saying he wasn’t surprised by all the attention his statement was getting but noting that Congress deserved “to know where things stand.” 
 
 It wasn’t exactly the headline the White House was looking for the day after Obama reaffirmed at the Pentagon that his strategy to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was working, especially with Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain blasting the president’s commitment to the strategy as delusional. 
 
 But Carter’s acknowledgement that so few Syrians have made it through the vetting process also led a number of senators on both sides of the aisle to raise important questions about the viability of the train-and-equip program, asking why it’s so difficult to find moderate rebels willing to take on ISIL. 
 
 Among the problems: stringent vetting standards, the U.S. requirement that rebels be willing to fight ISIL but not Syrian President Bashar Assad and the lack of a U.S. commitment to defend these troops from Assad’s advanced weapons. 
 
 Carter told the Armed Services panel that about 7,000 volunteers were being screened for the train-and-equip program but that the vetting standards were slowing things down. 
 
 The first problem is the basic vetting, which involves background checks, proof of identification and a pledge to obey the basic laws of war. Some volunteers have been booted from the program for simple reasons such as not meeting age requirements, one defense official told POLITICO, while others could not pass one or more layers of screening to protect the U.S. and allied troops conducting the effort. 
 
 The second problem is the requirement that the Syrian volunteers must agree only to fight ISIL and not the Assad regime. U.S. officials say the “ISIL-first” strategy is essential because without a political structure in place to replace Assad if he died or left power, chaos in Syria would worsen and the state would fail, like in Libya. 
 
 But many Syrians who have been brutalized in the civil war bear more animus toward Assad than toward ISIL, which is one reason why the “ISIL-first” commitment has winnowed out so many people who came forward. 
 
 Still, Pentagon officials say they’re optimistic about increasing the throughput at the four sites that have been created for the train-and-equip effort in Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. 
 
 “As training progresses, we are learning more about the opposition groups and building important relationships, which increases our ability to attract recruits and provides valuable intelligence for counter-ISIL operations,” Carter said. 
 
 McCain and other Republicans on the panel were unmoved. 
 
 “It is not that we are doing nothing,” the Arizona senator said. “It is that there is no compelling reason to believe that anything we are currently doing will be sufficient to achieve the president’s stated goal of degrading and ultimately destroying ISIL — either in the short term or the long term.” 
 
 And he suggested there’s another major reason the U.S. has been having so much trouble with the “moderate” Syrian force — it won’t make any solid commitments to the people it’s recruiting. 
 
 Unresolved questions about the support the U.S. would give the fighters have split the Obama administration for years, leading in part to the dismissal of Carter’s predecessor, then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey, who appeared with Carter before the committee Tuesday, acknowledged that a “debate” inside the administration continues about the effect that Assad has on the fight and to what degree his departure would help or hurt it. 
 
 For McCain and other critics, the problems are more basic: People won’t sign up to risk their lives unless they’re certain the U.S. is willing to provide air cover, resupply them with ammunition and supplies, and offer other types of support, he said. McCain mocked Carter’s answer about the administration’s absence of a policy, saying that no wonder Syrians wouldn’t agree to join if the answer they got was that a “decision will be made later.” 
 
 “It’s shameful to send people in and not assure them that we will defend them from attacks by barrel bombs,” McCain said. 
 
 McCain, who has been Obama’s foremost foreign-policy critic, had several other heated exchanges with Carter during Tuesday’s hearing. The Pentagon chief sought to provide some cover for the president by offering examples of progress in the U.S.-led campaign to defeat the terrorist group that has declared its own state. 
 
 Carter said the more than 5,000 airstrikes carried out by the United States and its coalition partners have “produced some clear tactical results,” putting ISIL “on the defensive,” with “its stronghold in Raqqah under pressure.” 
 
 But the defense secretary also acknowledged setbacks, making clear the administration was not even close to where it had hoped to be in its efforts to train Iraqi and Syrian forces. 
 
 As of June 30, he said, “we’ve only received enough trainees to be able to train” about 10,800 Iraqi troops, with an additional 4,600 in training. “I’ve told Iraqi leaders that while the United States is open to supporting Iraq more than we already are, we must see a greater commitment from all parts of the Iraqi government,” Carter said. 
 
 And in Syria, he explained, the administration’s efforts to train and equip a force to take on ISIL were still in the “early stages.” 
 
 “President Obama’s comments yesterday at the Pentagon reveal a disturbing degree of self-delusion,” McCain said. “None of the so-called progress that the president cited suggests that we are on a path to success.” 
 
 Several Democrats stepped in to defend the defense secretary, including the panel’s ranking member, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island. 
 
 “The pipeline is about 7,000,” Reed told POLITICO. “From that I think you’ll start seeing increased numbers. And then when you reach a critical mass, you start raising the question of where are they deployed, how are they deployed, are they supported.” 
 
 But, Reed was quick to add, “It’s going to take time.” ||||| Members of the Free Syrian Army run at the front lines in the town of Sheikh Najjar, in Aleppo, Syria, on June 10, 2014. 
 
 After months of planning, the Pentagon’s training mission for Syria’s rebels is beginning to take form. By Gordon Lubold 
 
 The Pentagon will deploy more than 400 U.S. military trainers and hundreds more supporting personnel to four training sites in three countries as early as March as part of a long-awaited plan to help rebel forces to stabilize Syria. 
 
 In addition to the trainers, the U.S. military expects to deploy hundreds of additional U.S. military personnel as so-called enabling forces who will deploy alongside the trainers to provide security and other support at the training sites, according to senior defense officials. Coalition partners are expected to contribute forces as well for an effort that for now is envisioned to train about 5,400 rebel forces each year for three years. 
 
 The number of U.S. forces planned for the effort, which the Pentagon has not yet announced publicly, provides a sense of the scope of a mission that has taken months to get off the ground. It comes amid frustration from critics arguing that the Obama Administration has not moved faster to assist the floundering moderate forces inside Syria and growing recognition that the U.S.-led airstrike campaign against the Islamic State in Syria has not been effective. The Defense Department’s train-and-equip program for Syrian rebels is not expected to change the dynamic on the ground anytime soon. But after months of planning, and after Congress provided funding late last year, it is now beginning to take form. 
 
 Since December, administration officials have said that training program could begin as early as March in the three countries that have agreed to host the training: Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. At least four training sites in those countries are being identified and the plan is to split the approximately 400 U.S. trainers and their accompanying support forces evenly across those sites for what is expected to be a six- to eight-week training cycle. 
 
 Earlier this week in Istanbul, Army Maj. Gen. Michael Nagata, who oversees the Combined Joint Interagency Task Force, and Daniel Rubinstein, U.S. special envoy for Syria, met with members of the Syrian opposition. The meetings were intended for American officials to brief the Syrian opposition on the train-and-equip program, but also for U.S. officials to get a better understanding of the dynamic inside Syria. 
 
 (Related: Is Obama’s ‘Iraq First’ Strategy Working Against ISIS?) 
 
 Apart from what is gleaned through intelligence sources, the U.S. has little to no first-hand sense of battlefield dynamics. That has blunted the effectiveness of the U.S. airstrike campaign inside Syria, which Pentagon leaders say is secondary in strategic importance to neighboring Iraq. There, the U.S. has deployed more than 2,100 U.S. service members and is working closely with Iraqi forces in northern Iraq, Baghdad and Anbar Province in the west to help them fight the Islamic State. 
 
 U.S. military commanders and intelligence sources say that while there is not yet a tipping point in Iraq, the combination of the airstrike campaign and the assistance to the Iraqi forces there has at least slowed the Islamic State’s ability to maneuver. 
 
 But Syria is a different story. With no American combat boots on the ground and limited intelligence, the U.S. is struggling to have an impact there against Islamic State militants or the Assad regime. 
 
 One of the biggest hurdles for the U.S. training program for Syrian rebels is identifying and vetting individuals to train. Defense officials said earlier this month that the U.S. is working closely with other U.S. government agencies as well as partner nations to find rebel fighters who would be candidates for the program. 
 
 “That process is very active right now,” Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby told reporters Jan. 6. 
 
 But identifying rebel fighters who don’t have ties to Jabhat al-Nusra, the main al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, is extremely difficult for a Pentagon with limited resources on the ground. 
 
 Still, the Pentagon is confident its forces can identify, recruit and then train a moderate force. American military forces, particularly Special Forces, have decades of experience screening foreign military forces for training, Pentagon officials said. 
 
 “We also know the Syrian opposition better now than we did two years ago through the programs we’ve had providing non-lethal assistance,” said Cmdr. Elissa Smith, a Pentagon spokesperson. The Pentagon, the State Department and other nations are using a number of sources to screen moderate Syrian recruits, and it will be an ongoing process, she said in an email. 
 
 “We’ve identified numerous groups that we believe are suitable for training based on our current understanding of the environment and we continue to evaluate the situation,” Smith said. 
 
 There are other concerns, however. The void left by removing those fighters from the battlefield to get them trained, some of whom will be rebel commanders on the frontlines of the fight against the Islamic State, could be detrimental to the fight inside Syria, said at least one analyst who studies the conflict. 
 
 Moreover, many rebel forces who would be candidates for training feel disillusioned over what is perceived to be the long time it’s taken for the U.S. train-and-equip program to get started. 
 
 “U.S. strategy in Syria to date has consistently undermined what rebel command and control structures exist, and as a result we’ve seen the Free Syrian Army disintegrate,” said Jennifer Cafarella, a Syria analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, which has been generally critical of the administration’s approach in Syria. 
 
 “The decision not to support the [Free Syrian Army] in its fight against the Assad regime in the wake of the August 2013 sarin gas attacks led to a vast loss of morale and rise in disillusionment with the West that in turn encouraged rebel commanders to take advantage of independent funding streams from other actors, predominately from the Gulf,” she said. 
 
 The U.S. covert training program in Jordan that focused in some cases on new rebel brigades served to frustrate older, more established rebel forces, she said. 
 
 Still, many believe the train-and-equip program, though limited, will begin to infuse rebel forces with the kind of training they need to more effectively challenge Islamic State fighters and bring some measure of stability to the country. The training may also amount to a morale boost, even if it is coming years after initial demands for direct U.S. military assistance for rebel forces at the beginning of the civil war in Syria. 
 
 Defense officials say they recognize the challenges they face with the training program for rebels in Syria. 
 
 “This is going to be hard,” one senior defense official said. “We have to recruit the guys, we have to assume that there are a lot of guys who are recruitable, there’s got to be some vetting,” the official said. “This is not going to be an easy enterprise here.”
– The Pentagon's plan to train an army of moderate Syrian rebels to defeat ISIS hasn't gotten off to the best start, officials admit: The $500 million program, which involves hundreds of US troops and training sites in Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, has only trained 60 vetted candidates so far, Defense Secretary Ash Carter told Congress yesterday. The program's goal was to produce 5,400 fighters a year as part of the White House's strategy to provide assistance to those fighting ISIS on the ground, reports Reuters. Carter explained to the Armed Services Committee that around 7,000 potential fighters are being vetted, and authorities are trying to ensure that they have no history of atrocities and no intention of committing future ones, the Guardian reports. Defense sources tell Politico that while background checks have eliminated some rebels, many potential fighters who came forward have been rejected because they won't commit to only fighting ISIS and not the Assad regime they were rebelling against in the first place. (Israel's anti-ISIS strategy involves a very big fence.)