Elizabeth O'Bagy earned a doctorate and quickly rose from being an intern at the Institute for the Study of War to becoming an expert on Syrian rebels cited by John Kerry and John McCain. Except O'Bagy didn’t hold a doctorate, and, in fact, had never even enrolled in the doctoral program at Georgetown, where she was a master’s student. The Institute fired her, but not before Kerry and McCain used her research to claim that al-Qaida jihadis were only 15-20% of the rebel forces in Syria during their push to ally the U.S. with the rebels against Bashar al-Assad.

O'Bagy is fluent in Arabic and has spent time with Free Syrian Army rebels, and there is no indication so far that her research was as falsified as her biography. Yet her credibility is certainly gone, and we have noted previously that many in the military and intelligence services estimate that the Syrian opposition is comprised of a far higher percentage of jihadis than O'Bagy Kerry, McCain or the commander in chief would have us believe.

Barack Obama waived a provision of the Arms Export Control Act prohibiting shipment of arms to terrorist groups in order for the U.S. to provide weapons to “vetted” opposition groups in Syria. How large a part did O'Bagy’s research play in that decision? According to Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), that may be irrelevant. “Our intelligence agencies, I think, have a very good handle on who to support and who not to support,” Corker said. “And there’s going to be mistakes. We understand some people are going to get arms that should not be getting arms. But we still should be doing everything we can to support the free Syrian opposition.” Should we?