U.S. President Barack Obama plans to deploy a small number of special operations forces to Syria to advise rebels Washington deems moderate, USA sources said on Friday, a step he has long resisted to avoid getting dragged into another war in the Middle East.
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“You’ve read one quote that, to be fair, is out of context”, he said when NBC’s Kristen Welker pointed to Obama saying in 2013 there would be no USA boots on the ground.
One official also says the USA will be sending additional aircraft, including F-15 fighters and A-10s to the Incirlik air base in Turkey.
The mission will involve fewer than 50 Special Operations advisers who will be working with resistance forces in northern Syria but will not be engaging in direct combat, administration officials said.
“Otherwise, we are likely to see the same results in the region”, newly elected House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican, said in a statement Friday.
And he pushed back on Earnest’s characterization that the anti-ISIS campaign hadn’t changed, noting that it’s the first time US troops will be stationed in harm’s way inside Syria.
Earnest admitted, “There is no denying the amount of risk they are taking on here”.
The Raqqa Front told Reuters earlier in October that US weapons were on their way.
The move was meant to bolster diplomatic efforts by Secretary of State John Kerry, who on Friday reached an agreement in Vienna with countries with opposing stakes to explore “a nationwide cease-fire” and ask the United Nations to oversee the revision of the Syrian Constitution and then new elections.
America says the deployment will be an initial group of around 50 special forces for training and advice embedded with what the White House is calling dependable elements of the Free Syrian Army.
He said the US special operations forces would train, advise and assist local forces as part of the stepped-up USA effort against IS. “It does, no question about it”, Carter said during a trip to Alaska. However, the official did not rule out that changing in the future, noting how the strategy has been adjusted over the past year depending on conditions on the ground.
He later told Iranian state television that calls for a timetable for Assad’s removal had been rejected at the talks and added: “The importance of the Syrian people deciding their country’s fate was underlined”.
“Our role fundamentally and the strategy is to enable local forces but does that put USA forces in harm’s way?” Moscow has claimed that it is also trying to root out ISIS, but the Pentagon believes the locations of the strikes make clear that the true goal is to bolster close ally President Bashar al-Assad, increasingly under threat from rebel forces.
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“Imagine the scenario in which American forces are deployed alongside Syrian opposition forces and come into combat with ISIL”, he said in a statement.
