WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pentagon leaders told Congress on Thursday that they had supported a recommendation to arm Syrian rebels promoted by the State Department and CIA but whichPresident Barack Obama ultimately decided against.

Obama's government has limited its support to non-lethal aid for the rebels who, despite receiving weapons from countries like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, are poorly armed compared to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's army and loyalist militias.

Syria's 22-month-long conflict has killed an estimated 60,000 people.

Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, has championed greater U.S. involvement and chided the Obama administration at a hearing, asking Pentagon leaders: "How many more have to die before you recommend military action?"

He then pressed Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, about whether they backed the recommendation by the State Department and CIA chiefs last year to arm the rebels.

Panetta and Dempsey said they had backed the recommendation, and later in the hearing, the defense secretary elaborated.

"Obviously there were a number of factors that were involved here that ultimately led to the president's decision to make (the aid) non-lethal," Panetta said, adding he supported Obama's decision.

The comments were the first public acknowledgement of Pentagon support to arm the rebels since the New York Times reported on February 2 about the plan developed last summer by Hillary Clinton and David Petraeus, who have since left their jobs at the State Department and CIA, respectively.

The defense chiefs' testimony also suggested that White House opposition alone may have been enough to override the position of most major U.S. foreign policy and security agencies - the State and Defense departments, and the CIA.

CONCERN ABOUT DEEPER U.S. INVOLVEMENT

The Times said that the plan to arm and train rebels was rebuffed by the White House over concerns it could draw the United States into the Syrian conflict and that the arms could fall into the wrong hands.

The questions about U.S. policy in Syria came during a hearing focusing on Libya, with Pentagon leaders defending their response to last year's deadly attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.

Republican lawmakers raised questions about whether the reaction was too slow and whether Obama was not engaged enough during the incident, choosing to get updates on the crisis from staff instead of military leaders.

Panetta and Dempsey said U.S. forces could not have reached Libya in time to prevent the deaths of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans on September 11, 2012, and assured that Obama was kept in the loop.

Panetta also stressed that it was also not the U.S. military's responsibility to be able to immediately respond anywhere in the world to a crisis. There was no intelligence about a specific plan to attack the consulate, he and Dempsey noted.

"The United States military ... is not and, frankly, should not be a 911 service capable of arriving on the scene within minutes to every possible contingency around the world," he said, referring to the 911 U.S. emergency phone number.

Panetta, who is soon retiring, also used the hearing as an opportunity to take more parting shots at Congress over its inability to reach a budget deal needed to avert automatic spending cuts that will hit the military.

Panetta warned those cuts, due to start kicking in next month, could create a "readiness crisis" for the military and urged lawmakers to strike a deal.

"I cannot imagine that people would stand by and deliberately hurt this country in terms of our national defense by letting this take place," he said.

It was likely to be Panetta's last hearing before he retires, and despite a sometimes accusatory tone from lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats praised his work as Pentagon chief and, previously, as CIA director.

The man nominated to be Panetta's successor, former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, faces stiff Republican resistance but is expected to win Senate confirmation.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Warren Strobel and Philip Barbara)

• by Care2 Causes Editors
• February 7, 2013
  
  

This undated photo released by the Los Angeles Police Department shows suspect Christopher Dorner, a former Los Angeles officer. Dorner, who was fired from the LAPD in 2008 for making false statements, is linked to a weekend killing in which one of the victims was the daughter of a former police captain who had represented him during the disciplinary hearing. Authorities believe Dorner opened fire early Thursday on police in cities east of Los Angeles, killing an officer and wounding another. Police issued a statewide "officer safety warning" and police were sent to protect people named in the posting that was believed to be written by Dorner. (AP Photo/Los Angeles Police Department)

Christopher Dorner sees himself as a crusader, a 6-foot, 270-pound whistleblower who confronted racism early in life and believes he suffered in his career and personal life for challenging injustices from bigotry to dishonesty.

He fulfilled his lifelong dream of becoming a Los Angeles police officer in 2005, but saw it unravel three years later when he was fired after a police review board decided he falsely accused his training officer of kicking a mentally ill man in the face and chest. The incident led Dorner to plot violent revenge against those he believed responsible for his downfall, according to a 14-page manifesto police believe he authored because there are details in it only he would know.

Police say Dorner began carrying out that plot last weekend when he killed a woman whose father had represented him as he fought to keep his job. On Thursday — the eighth anniversary of his first day on the job with the LAPD — Dorner ambushed two officers, killing one, authorities said.

Also killed was the woman's fiance, whose body was found along with hers in a parked car near the recently engaged couple's condominium.

"I know most of you who personally know me are in disbelief to hear from media reports that I am suspected of committing such horrendous murders and have taken drastic and shocking actions in the last couple of days," the manifesto reads. "You are saying to yourself that this is completely out of character of the man you knew who always wore a smile wherever he was seen."

David Pighin, a neighbor of Dorner in the Orange County community of La Palma, said the ex-officer kept to himself and left his house and his black Nissan Titan, outfitted with tinted windows and custom rims, impeccably clean.

"There wasn't a scratch on it," Pighin said. "I would see him getting out of his truck and walk straight into the house."

Dorner has no children and court records show his wife filed for divorce in 2007, though there's no evidence one was granted. Pighin believed Dorner lived with his mother and possibly his sister. On Wednesday night, Pighin saw a white van with two armed SWAT officers in front of Dorner's house and later learned about the manhunt.

"We were completely shocked," he said. "This is a good family that appeared to be really nice people. They were really admired in the neighborhood."

The 33-year-old Dorner graduated in 2001 from Southern Utah University in Cedar City, Utah, school officials said, where he majored in political science and had an unremarkable career as a reserve running back on the football team.

A friend from those days, Jamie Usera, told the Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/Xpjawr ) that he saw no red flags. The two would have friendly debates about the extent of racism in the U.S. and take trips into the Utah desert to hunt rabbits, Usera told the newspaper.

"He was a typical guy. I liked him an awful lot," said Usera, who's now an attorney in Salem, Ore. "Nothing about him struck me as violent or irrational in any way. He was opinionated, but always seemed level-headed."

In addition to police work, Dorner served in the Naval Reserves, earning a rifle marksman ribbon and pistol expert medal. He served in a naval undersea warfare unit and various aviation training units, according to military records, and took a leave from the LAPD and deployed to Bahrain in 2006 and 2007.

His last day with the Navy was Friday.

"I will utilize every bit of small arms training, demolition, ordinance and survival training I've been given," the manifesto reads. "You have misjudged a sleeping giant."

Police were providing more than 40 protection details for people they determined at high risk after Dorner warned in his manifesto that their families would be harmed.

"I never had the opportunity to have a family of my own. I'm terminating yours," the manifesto says.

In the document, Dorner rails against the hypocrisy of black police commanders who crack down on their white subordinates and catalogues his experiences with racism and injustice, beginning with a schoolyard fight at his Christian elementary school and ending with the disciplinary process that led to his dismissal from the LAPD in 2008.

Dorner recalls that he beat up a fellow student who called him a racial slur on the playground while in the first grade. The principal punished the student, but also chastised Dorner for not turning the other cheek, "as Jesus did."

"That day I made a life decisions that I will not tolerate racial derogatory terms spoken to me," he wrote.

He also recalls sticking up for a fellow cadet in the police academy when other recruits sang Hitler youth songs and taunted the man, who was the son of a Holocaust survivor, and placing another recruit in a choke hold after the man used a racial slur and refused to stop when Dorner objected.

In the latter instance, Dorner filed a complaint against two of his fellow recruits, but only one of the men was disciplined and it left him bitter, according to court records. He would later tell a colleague the LAPD was corroded by the racism of some of its officers.

Dorner graduated and served for only four months in the field before being deployed to the Middle East in 2006 and 2007. When he returned, he was assigned to a training officer, Sgt. Teresa Evans, who became increasingly alarmed at his conduct, according a summary of an interview with Evans in Dorner's disciplinary file.

The burly man with tattoos on his biceps repeatedly asked why he was not sent to reintegration training after his return from war and on one occasion, began weeping in the patrol car and demanded to be taken back to the police academy to be retrained, court documents show.

Dorner also told Evans he was building a house in Las Vegas and intended to sue the department after his probationary period was over — a conversation Evans reported to a superior.

Evans began collecting examples of "deficiencies" in Dorner's police work — including talking to a suspect on a "man with a gun" call without taking cover. After much prodding, Evans recounts, Dorner told her he "might have some issues regarding his deployment."

On Aug. 4, 2007, Evans warned Dorner that she would give him an unsatisfactory rating and request that he be removed from the field unless he improved.

Six days later, Dorner reported to internal affairs that in the course of an arrest Evans had kicked a severely mentally ill man in the chest and left cheek. His report came two weeks after the arrest, police and court records allege.

Three civilian witnesses and a harbor policeman all said they didn't see Evans kick the man, who had a quarter-inch scratch on his cheek consistent with his fall into a bush. The police review board ruled against Dorner, leading to his dismissal.

"The delay in reporting the alleged misconduct, coupled with the witnesses' statements, irreparably destroy Dorner's credibility and bring into question his suitability for continued employment as apolice officer," the file reads.

Evans could not be reached for comment. Eric Rose, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the officers' union, declined to comment on the case or on Dorner.

As a result, he lost everything, including his relationships with his mother, sister and close friends, he wrote in his manifesto.

"Self-preservation is no longer important to me. I do not fear death as I died long ago," he writes. "I was told by my mother that sometimes bad things happen to good people. I refuse to accept that."

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Associated Press Writers Julie Watson in San Diego, Greg Risling, Linda Deutsch and Tami Abdollah in Los Angeles and researchers Rhonda Shafner and Susan James in New York contributed to this report.