Hillary Clinton on Wednesday said she wouldn’t put ground troops in Iraq “ever again” and would not use boots on the ground to defeat ISIS. We are not putting ground troops into Iraq ever again.
Advertisement
Clinton said that when she traveled overseas she went into at tent to review classified documents, for instance, because she didn’t want it to be possible for someone who had a camera to photograph the information she was viewing. That is my highest counterterrorism goal and we have got to do it with air power.
However, Clinton insisted Iraqi forces must feel they have the US support necessary to press forward.
“They are not going to get ground troops”.
“They are not going to get ground troops”. She, however, said that Iraqi forces will have United States support, which includes surveillance, special forces, reconnaissance and intelligence.
“Remember, when I became Secretary of State, we had 200,000 troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan”, she told Lauer.
There are now more than 5,000 ground troops in Iraq and approximately 300 in Syria now training and advising local Iraqi forces and Syrian opposition fighters who are challenging the Islamic State.
The former secretary of State also said US forces would continue to target ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi to “focus our attention”, as the United States did with taking out Osama bin Laden. And I’m very grateful that we have brought home the vast majority of those.
Citing the Obama government’s focus on the al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, Clinton said: “I intend to make that happen”.
Advertisement
“Going after American-Muslims, defaming a Gold Star family, the family of Captain Khan, making it more hard for us to have a coalition with Muslim majority nations is not going to help us to succeed in defeating ISIS and protecting our American homeland”, she said, a reference to Trump’s remarks against Humayun Khan, who lost his life while in Iraq for the United States military.
