More details are emerging about Phoenix native Charlie Keating IV, who was killed Tuesday while fighting for USA military forces in Iraq. Warren says enemy fighters launched a large, complex attack on the Peshmerga in the town, with armored Humvees and bulldozers.
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A USA defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the incident publicly, said the American was killed with small arms fire suggesting that Islamic State fighters likely came within a few hundred yards of the US forces. He’d also been to Afghanistan once.
A day after a US Navy SEAL was killed by ISIS jihadists in Iraq, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Washington and its allies agreed to ramp up their campaign to vanquish the terror group – despite the many risks.
The role of United States troops in the fight remains somewhat murky, though special operations forces in Iraq have launched a series of kill-or-capture missions against Isis leadership over the past several months.
“Our overall approach is to enable local forces to do the fighting … but that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to do any fighting at all”, Carter said.
The Kurdish Peshmerga militia have generally fought more effectively against ISIS in northern Iraq than the regular Iraqi security forces.
Officials say the soldier was advising Kurdish Peshmerga when ISIL fighters breached defences north of Mosul.
The Defense Department identified the slain service member as Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Charles H. Keating IV, 31, of San Diego – grandson of financier Charles Keating of the 1980s savings and loan scandal.
But they “could not get away”, Warren said.
C-4 was a star distance runner in high school, where track coach Rob Reniewicki remembers him as the kid with the million dollar smile.
U.S. officials said Keating was in a group of SEALs who were coming to assist a second USA military adviser group pinned down by jihadists’ fire at or near a peshmerga command post. “And he had the best luck in the world, and he always made it through everything, so that’s why this is so shocking”.
At its highest point in the summer of 2014, the group had overrun almost a third of each country, declaring a “caliphate” spanning from northwestern Syria to the outskirts of Baghdad.
“I don’t want you to think that there is some sort standing [quick reaction force] out there in the sky somewhere that can respond to anything that happens across the entire battle field”, he said.
Petty Officer Keating’s mother said her son wanted to serve his country and that he died doing what he loved. The elder Keating died at age 90 in 2014.
Force protection “is something that’s constantly being re-assessed – that requires hard questions”, Cook said.
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By order of the governor, flags in Arizona flew at half staff on Wednesday in memory of Keating. The number now on the ground in Iraq is 4,000 or 5,000 – a small fraction of the footprint that was ordered by the previous President in the context of the invasion of Iraq, he said.
