Intel: Key Republican questions Pentagon’s proposed military training program

The Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is pushing back on a Pentagon proposal to train foreign military officers from the Middle East and elsewhere, arguing that it unnecessarily replicates an existing program run by the State Department.

“Despite requests, I have received no information on what problem this Department of Defense proposal may seek to address, or why any such problem cannot be addressed through improvements to the existing State Department-led program,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee James Risch, R-Idaho, told Al-Monitor. “Absent details from [the Defense Department], this appears to be a duplicative effort which would compete with the existing State Department program.”