Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Tuesday that the U.S. will begin "direct action on the ground" against ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria, aiming to intensify pressure on the militants as progress against them remains elusive.
"We won't hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL, or conducting such missions directly whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground," Carter said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services committee, using an alternative name for the militant group.
Carter pointed to last week's rescue operation with Kurdish forces in northern Iraq to free hostages held by ISIS.
Carter and Pentagon officials initially refused to characterize the rescue operation as U.S. boots on the ground. However, Carter said last week that the military expects "more raids of this kind" and that the rescue mission "represents a continuation of our advise and assist mission."
This may mean some American soldiers "will be in harm's way, no question about it," Carter said last week.
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Obama As Bush III
To a lot of young people with whom I speak, Bush's great flaw was getting us involved in a war in the Middle East, because genocide there isn't our problem. Obama's use of drone strikes has been more widespread than Bush's, but boots on the ground is the real concern of progressives, not the fairly abstract killing remotely. (Obviously, as moral imperatives, this is weak.) Now Obama's minions are talking about boots on the ground. From Oct. 27, 2015 NBC:
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I think the only thing that has changed is they were caught publicly when the Delta Force NCO was killed. Even an administration as clueless as Obama's has to know (or has belatedly learned) that you cannot fight an army, even an irregular one like ISIS, without troops on the ground and in the battle.
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