Nobel Peace Prize Winner - Obama orders US special forces to 'assist' fight against Isis in Syria
Barack Obama has ordered up to 50 special operations troops to Syria, US officials announced on Friday, in an apparent breach of a promise not to put US “boots on the ground” to fight Islamic State militants in the country.
The Pentagon has also been “consulting” with the Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, to establish a special operations taskforce to fight Isis “leaders and networks” across the Syrian border in Iraq, a senior administration official told the Guardian on Friday.
But the White House insisted that its overall strategy to combat Isis remained the same and said the special forces troops would be helping coordinate local ground forces in the north of the country and other non-specified “coalition efforts” to counter Isis rather than engaging in major ground operations.
“The decision the president has made is to further intensify our support for our forces who have made progress against Isis,” the White House spokesman, Josh Earnest, said at a news conference.
The move came as diplomats worked in Vienna to restart talks on a political transition that would remove Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. At the discussions with leaders from Russia, Saudi Arabia and Iran, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, framed the troop announcement as part of a shifting policy that included this major diplomatic push to initiate talks that would bring about a political transition in Syria.
“We are intensifying our counter-Daesh campaign and we are intensifying our diplomatic efforts to end the conflict,” Kerry said, using the Arabic acronym for Isis. “That is why President Obama made an announcement about stepping up the fight against Daesh.”
The injection of US special forces in Syria seemed at odds with earlier statements Obama has made about not placing troops in the country.
Barack Obama in 2013: ‘I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria.’
“I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria,” Obama said in an address in September 2013.
Asked about that “boots on the ground” statement, Earnest said the quote was taken “out of context”.
“The quote that you pulled there is a very different situation,” Earnest told a reporter. “He [Obama] said he was not prepared to put boots on the ground to take out the Assad regime. That was precisely the mistake the previous administration had made … to take down Saddam Hussein.”
The US military has conducted narrow ground missions inside Syria, such as one in May in which special forces killed an Islamic State commander in a raid the Pentagon said took place in the east of the country.
A $500m effort over the last two years by the United States to train Arab opposition forces in Syria failed. General Lloyd Austin, commander of US Central Command, told the Senate last month that it had resulted in only a handful of fighters actively battling the jihadi army. “We’re talking four or five,” Austin said.
Thousands of US forces are deployed in neighboring Iraq – where local forces are also fighting groups identifying themselves as Isis – in what the White House has described as a training and advisory role. The US troops lead and assist local fighters and help coordinate airstrikes against enemy positions. The Pentagon says the troops have rarely, if ever, participated directly in combat against Isis fighters. Last week a US soldier participating in a raid on a compound near the city of Kirkuk, Iraq, to free dozens of Iraqi prisoners from captivity was killed.
The change in approach in Syria coincides with Russian intervention against a variety of rebel groups fighting Assad and a decision to invite Iran to the Vienna peace talks.
Administration sources also told the Guardian that the US would be enhancing military assistance to Jordan and Lebanon to help their governments fight Isis.
The forces were to be supported by an additional deployment of A-10 “Warthog” attack aircraft and F-15 jets to Nato’s Incirlik base in Turkey, officials said.
....Wait...Is the title of this thread "boots on the ground in Syria"? Obama said "NO BOOTS ON THE GROUND IN SYRIA" in 2013.
LMAO! There were none in 2013!
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
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