Defense Secretary Ash Carter said “it is a combat death” at a Tuesday press conference.
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All state flags in Arizona were ordered to fly at half-staff from sunrise to sunset Wednesday in the younger Keating’s honor.
In a teleconference briefing with Pentagon reporters from Baghdad, Warren said Keating responded to the ISIL attack on the peshmerga forces as part of a USA quick-reaction force in the village of Tal Asquf at about 7:30 a.m., according to DoD News.
“These risks will continue, and we deeply regret his loss”.
“Mr. Keating is the third American service member to be killed in direct combat in our nation’s fight against ISIS”.
He also said he was “confident that today’s meeting will produce additional military commitments”.
Williams reports there are about 5,000 US service members in Iraq, mostly classed as military advisers.
About 12 USA advisers arrived in the village Teleskof on Tuesday for a one-day meeting with peshmerga fighters to help them with training and equipment, Warren said.
Warren, spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve in Baghdad, said it was “difficult to know” how ISIS assembled the attack force without being detected. “The Peshmerga have regained control of Tal Asqaf”.
Keating was one of more than 4,000 US servicemen in Iraq to advise local forces and conduct special operations against ISIS.
“Our thoughts, prayers and eternal gratitude are with Mr. Keating, his family, his fellow SEALs, and all of the fearless Americans who’ve answered the call to serve”.
Keating was the grandson of Charles Keating Jr., who was involved in a massive savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s and 1990s, in which thousands of small financial institutions failed. But he would only join if he could take a basic underwater training course, which would be his first hurdle to eventually becoming a SEAL, she said. Five senators who received campaign donations from the elder Keating were accused of impropriety for appealing to regulators on his behalf in 1987.
Reniewicki, who also teaches at Arcadia, told 12 News Charlie was his number-one runner for cross country all four years.
“He fittingly went down swinging alongside his brothers in a withering firefight right where he wanted to be”, his commander said.
Keating was one of the more than 5,000 US troops now stationed in Iraq, ostensibly on a noncombat mission.
“After the enemy forces [punched] through the forward lines there and made their move into Tel Askuf, our forces automatically became kind of embroiled in the ensuing battle”, Warren said, according to the US Naval Institute.
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There are critics of this gradual deployment; Republican Senator John McCain, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, accuses the Obama administration of “grudging incrementalism”.
