“If we find more forces that we can enable in this way we’re prepared to do more…”
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Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Tuesday that the United States will send expeditionary military personnel into battle with Iraqi and Kurdish forces against Islamic State militants as part of a stepped-up war effort ordered by the White House.
Then Carter discussed strategy and noted that U.S.-backed Kurdish forces had recently retaken the strategic town of Sinjar and cut off ISIS’s “main line of communication” between Raqqa, Syria and Mosul, Iraq, which are the two biggest cities still under their control.
Raids will be conducted by invitation from Baghdad, but the forces also could strike unilaterally within Syria, according to Carter.
“These special operators will over time be able to conduct raids, free hostages, gather intelligence, and capture ISIL leaders”, he said. That same raid resulted in the death of Master Sgt. Joshua L. Wheeler, the first American fatality from combat in Iraq since the return of US forces to that country in mid-2014.
Pentagon officials hope that the new special operations force would cause both the capabilities of local forces and intelligence information to snowball and further squeeze the Islamic State, which already is the target of an aerial bombing campaign by a U.S.-led global coalition.
It was not immediately clear how many USA special operations troops forces would be deployed.
Carter and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford had been summoned before the panel amid concerns by lawmakers that the Obama administration’s approach to fighting the extremist group is not tough enough, especially in light of deadly terrorist attacks November 13 in Paris.
In a later exchange with Rep. James Langevin, D-R.I., Carter elaborated on the prospect of using the expanded special operations force in Iraq to conduct raids inside Syria.
“Importantly, we now have an opportunity to divide ISIL’s presence in Iraq from that in Syria”, he said.
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“It puts everyone on notice”, Carter told Congress. “You don’t know at night who is going to be coming into the window”.
