More than 1,000 American Military Personnel On the Ground in Iraq Now

[morningfog]

The United States has taken the lead in providing support to the Kurdish region, with the Pentagon sending an additional 130 military advisers to northern Iraq to help plan the evacuation of thousands of Yazidis.

The deployment brought the number of American military personnel in Iraq to more than 1,000, less than three years after the last combat troops left the country. A senior administration official said that the military was drawing up plans for consideration by President Obama that could include American ground troops in what is likely to be an international effort to rescue the refugees.

Around 900 American military advisers and security personnel were already in Iraq working with Iraqi security forces and protecting American personnel at the embassy in Baghdad and at other sites.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/14/world/middleeast/iraq-humanitarian-aid.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share&_r=0

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. But...but....Obama said no ground troops!

Then a bit later said no COMBAT troops.

Man, you gotta watch every frigging word, don'tcha?

[morningfog]

3. It is such bullshit. The pilots are undeniably engaging in combat. The ground troops

are undeniably on the ground and assisting the pilots.

And, now there are US planes and helicopters on air bases in Iraq. We are at war in Iraq with ISIS. This semantic, drip drip drip bullshit only obscures whatever objective Obama actually has. Although he hasn't outlined anything of coherence yet.

[leftstreet]

2. Is 'security personnel' newspeak for private contractors?

[arcane1]

6. That's my guess. Though I still call them mercenaries.

[dixiegrrrrl]

9. "protecting American personnel at the embassy in Baghdad and at other sites."

Contractors, and the mercenaries who guard them.
The "other sites" are the headquarters and oilfields of Halliburton and other oil companies.

[bigwillq]

4. Yuck

[Dems to Win]

5. Wonder if this number includes the CIA personnel at their drone base in Erbil

Everyone in Kurdistan knows there is a CIA drone base in Irbil, but it's kept 'secret' from the American public. Well, not really, since this was in McClatchy, but Obama won't just come out and tell Americans about it.

Someone provided a link the other day (sorry I do not remember who) to this story from mid July:

Expansion of ‘secret’ facility in Iraq suggests closer U.S.-Kurd ties
BY MITCHELL PROTHERO
McClatchy Foreign StaffJuly 11, 2014

IRBIL, IRAQ — A supposedly secret but locally well-known CIA station on the outskirts of Irbil’s airport is undergoing rapid expansion as the United States considers whether to engage in a war against Islamist militants who’ve seized control of half of Iraq in the past month.

Western contractors hired to expand the facility and a local intelligence official confirmed the construction project, which is visible from the main highway linking Irbil to Mosul, the city whose fall June 9 triggered the Islamic State’s sweep through northern and central Iraq. Residents around the airport say they can hear daily what they suspect are American drones taking off and landing at the facility.

snip

Peshmerga forces already are manning checkpoints and bunkers to protect the facility, which sits just a few hundred yards from the highway.

“Within a week of the fall of Mosul we were being told to double or even triple our capacities,” said one Western logistics contractor who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he’d signed nondisclosure agreements with the U.S. government on the matter.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/07/11/233126/expansion-of-secret-facility-in.html#storylink=cpy

[TwilightGardener]

7. There's no way to conduct airstrikes and provide aid and intel without someone on the ground

to direct and guide operations. Combat controllers, other special forces, Marines for evacuation operations--those sorts of troops are not there to engage in traditional combat (except for self-defense if there's trouble), they are there to guide and support the fairly narrow mission that was announced. The amount of troops isn't the whole picture--it's the TYPE of troops that matter. It's the mission that we need to watch. When they start sending in the infantry to hold territory, then we're getting in pretty deep. Hopefully we can successfully equip and help the Kurds (and the Iraqi military once they get their shit together) to conduct their OWN ground game.

[morningfog]

8. I don't disagree with anything you wrote.

However, troops being on the ground to facilitate combat strikes from jets is a nearly meaningless distinctions to combat troops on the ground.

The mission was framed as narrow, but is really quite open-ended. And it has already been expanding, with several high ups starting to roll out the idea that ground troops would be needed to contain ISIS and to possibly engage ISIS during an evacuation from the mountain as well as an expansion of the bombings. I just don't see how we will be able to walk away before going into full combat at this point.

[TwilightGardener]

10. I think the plan is that "ground troops" would be the Iraqi army and the peshmerga, and

our advisors and operators are there to do what the Iraqis can't do well for themselves (airlift, airstrikes, drones, surveillance). They CAN and SHOULD do the ground campaign of taking and holding cities, street fighting, that sort of thing, it's THEIR country and it's their political strife that's allowing the extremists to win. I think it really came as a surprise to the US that the Iraqi army basically collapsed in the face of ISIS's big push and allowed them to take so much territory so quickly. I hate what we have to do there, but we aren't going to stand back and watch Iraq collapse or the Kurds get slaughtered without any attempt to salvage it on our part--it just isn't going to happen.