He said there was no “ready-made moderate Syrian force that was able to defeat Assad,” and so pitting “farmers and dentists and folks who’ve never fought before” against a dictator and the “highly-trained jihadists” would have only one outcome.

Therefore, Obama continued, it’s a “fantasy” that the U.S. just sending a few arms to the moderate rebels would have helped, and he got in a little dig at the end by saying this is something that Washington and the press corps should understand better.