Polling after the attacks in Paris and Beirut found Americans divided over sending USA ground troops to fight the Islamic State.
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“That creates a virtuous cycle of better intelligence, which generates more targets, more raids, and more momentum”, he added.
There are now about 3,300 American troops in Iraq, the Associated Press reports, and President Obama has previously set the maximum number of USA troops at 3,350.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter told Congress about the extra troops Tuesday but did not specify how many.
The general did say, however, that he is not satisfied with the level of cooperation and described the process of reaching “the desired political end state in Iraq” as a “hard slog”.
While Carter did not divulge much about the special ops forces that will be battling ISIS, DOD officials have told NBC News that the expeditionary targeting force would be permanently based in Iraq.
Obama “is edging as closely as he can to try to fill this … gap without violating in a technical sense his own “boots on the ground” dictum”, Hof said, referring to Obama’s frequent pledges not to return to US troops to a large-scale ground war.
“We’re at war. We are using the might of the finest fighting force the world has ever known”, Carter said in Washington.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called the impending move a “belated step forward” in the fight against Islamic State. “We are constantly seeking and finding new ways to strike ISIL and also to protect ourselves”.
Carter emphasized the recent progress against ISIS, with Kurdish forces retaking Sinjar in northern Iraq, which cuts ISIS’s direct supply lines from Syria to Mosul, and new territorial gains by Kurdish and Arab troops in northern Syria.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant wants the United States to be “impetuous right now, as opposed to being aggressive”, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the House Armed Services Committee Tuesday.
Carter said this new “expeditionary targeting force” will work alongside Iraqi security forces and the Kurdish peshmerga through approval of the Iraqi central government, and may operate unilaterally in Syria. A US soldier was killed during the operation. “I have every reason to believe the president will allow us to do more and authorize us to do more when we have more opportunities”.
Carter also said U.S.-led coalition aircraft have destroyed almost 400 tankers carrying oil from Daesh-controlled oil facilities. The team will include intelligence analysts and special operations troops skilled in conducting raids, the source said.
‘The global community – including our allies and partners – has to step up before another attack like Paris, ‘ he said.
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Turkey must do more to control its border, and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States have been preoccupied by the Yemen conflict after joining the air campaign in the early days, Carter said.
