Press TV has interviewed Scott Bennet, a former US army psychological warfare officer and counter-terrorism analyst based in San Francisco, to discuss the challenges Washington has encountered in training so-called moderate rebels in Syria.

A rough transcription of the interview follows.

Press TV: The Pentagon must have known about some of these challenges. What do you think some of these challenges are in trying to recruit these so-called moderate militants that fight in Syria?

Bennet: Well, it is an exercise in futility and I would say it is even borderline treason for the American military commander Martin Dempsey to be sowing the seeds of a war that can inevitably blow back on American troops.

It is nonsense to think that you are going to go into Syria and somehow craft a body of warriors who want to overthrow Assad and overthrow ISIS at the same time. They are one and the same! What alarms me is we were in the military psychological warfare community where I worked, a lot of very good and bright people were always looking at the Muslim Brotherhood as a major problem to our troops and our policy and now you see the Muslim Brotherhood being a significant party that we are funding and supporting.

So how many troops in the United States were killed as a result of this silly policy the we are completely turning against? Plus, what do the Syrian people want? We haven’t even allowed a sophisticated conversation. What do the Russians want, the border countries?

The United States is going very black flag and pushing its agenda and it is going to create another Iraq. It is going to create an overflowing cauldron of chaos that I hope and pray doesn’t happen.

Press TV: The Pentagon is now admitting that it is facing these challenges. Could it have been that they did not count for these things in the past?

Bennet: They are either senile old men who should be thrown out of their positions and have no business wearing a military uniform or being on Capitol Hill as a legislator; or they are maniacs and psychologically unstable or they are lying and they are liars and they are traitors and they are just looking to profit on endless war in the Middle East, without any sense of what it is going to do with Europe, or the neighboring countries, or Russia, or the countries that live in the neighborhood. The United States doesn’t live in that neighborhood, so why is it so foolish or arrogant or both to be meddling and trying to create sand castles that will inevitably be wiped out by the tide of the Islamic extremism that we see in ISIS and it is simply a lie.

The real story is that Saudi Arabia, the (Persian) Gulf nations, and Turkey are looking to create an Arab entity there and destabilize Syrian, and get rid of Iraq and get rid of Iran eventually.

I think their sights are set in long-term on Iran and Israel is participating in that by giving aid and comfort to the ISIS fighters.

MTM/MKA