“While plans are still being developed, we don’t now anticipate that this will number more than two hundred total individuals”, a USA defense official told Breitbart News.
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“Iraq welcomes support from worldwide partners but there is no need for foreign combat ground troops”, Abadi said on his Twitter feed.
They faced skeptical lawmakers who argued that the US needs to be more forceful in countering the threat from IS, credited with attacks in Paris and Beirut and the downing of a Russian airliner.
The Pentagon says it will increase the number of USA troops in Iraq by 100, in an effort to create a special operations targeting force that will seek out and kill ISIS leaders, rescue hostages and gather intelligence.
The task force will be posted near Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s northern Kurdish region, USA officials said.
The military also recently deployed fewer than 50 USA special operators to Kurdish-controlled northeast Syria to advise vetted Syrian and Kurdish rebel groups that are fighting Islamic State and its allies there.
Carter also hinted he might send additional special forces to Syria, beyond the 50 already disclosed. About half of respondents approved of sending ground troops to fight the terrorist group, and 63 percent said that such a deployment was inevitable.
After the Paris attacks, US President Barack Obama reviewed its strategy to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq and is set to deploy special forces to conduct unilateral operations into Syria. “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”, Dunford said. “We’re good at intelligence, we’re good at mobility, we’re good at surprise”, Carter said. One US troop died in the operation.
“It puts everybody on notice in Syria”.
“We are acting to defeat ISIL at its core”, said Carter, using the government’s acronym for ISIS. No timetable was given on when the exceptional operations powers will start to touch base in Iraq.
Carter said the force might be American-only but more likely would be mixed with Kurds or others.
A new study by George Washington University says several thousand Americans regularly “consume Islamic State propaganda”. In a reminder of the confrontations that characterized the previous Iraq war, spokesmen for some of Iraq’s powerful Shiite militias threatened to fight any American troops sent to Iraq following Carter’s announcement.
“Because that’s a lot of times who’s either directing the cross-border operations or who’s physically going across the borders”, Warren said, adding that the raids will “contribute to strengthening that border, reducing that porousness” of ISIS leaders.
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“While we welcome this support, we emphasize any such support and special operations anywhere in Iraq can only be deployed subject to the approval of the Iraqi Government and in coordination with the Iraqi forces and with full respect to Iraqi sovereignty”. “If all we have is Western aggression, we will never win”, he said.
