US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter has told a committee in Congress that a new force of special operations troops is to be deployed to Iraq to conduct raids against Daesh militants there and in neighbouring Syria.
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“The raids in Iraq will be done at the invitation of the Iraqi government and focused on defending its borders and building the Iraqi security force’s own capacity”, Carter said Tuesday before the House Armed Services Committee.
“It’s a really complicated situation”, said U.S. Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-Lowell), who pressed Carter and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford on ways to boost the role of allied countries.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday that North Atlantic Treaty Organisation members stand ready to step up military efforts against the Islamic State and held out hope of broadening cooperation between the West and Russian Federation to end Syria’s protracted civil war. USA troops turned her over to the Iraqis.
“There is no need for foreign ground combat forces in Iraqi territory”, Abadi said in a statement released late on Tuesday in which he praised the performance of Iraqi special forces. “So we’re going to go where the enemy is and we’re going to conduct operations where they most effectually degrade the capabilities of the enemy”.
Kerry said military assistance wouldn’t mean ground troops or direct fighting for some countries.
Polling after the attacks in Paris and Beirut found Americans divided over sending USA ground troops to fight IS.
“U.S. ground troops can kill a lot of bad guys, but as we learned in Iraq, our presence has the effect of drawing two enemy fighters into battle for every one we kill”.
By basing them inside Iraq, Carter hopes to increase the frequency of raids – capturing ISIS leaders for interrogation and seizing the information stored on their cell phones and lap tops. “So yeah, more Americans will be coming here to Iraq and some of them will be conducting raids inside of both Iraq and Syria”. “We applaud his leadership”, Kerry told reporters. We have the long reach that no one else has.
Despite more than a year of daily plane and drone strikes against the IS group, the United States is still struggling to win, and lawmakers expressed frustration at the slow pace of the campaign. How Much Has the U.S. Fight Against ISIS Cost? The militant group controls a wide swath of Iraq and neighboring Syria.
“In the midterm, if ISIS is allowed to maintain this space, they’ll have the time to plot against us”, he said.
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USA officials had said earlier that the specialized force would number around 200, tasked with attacking “the brain trust and nervous system” of the Islamic State terror group.
