Nearly half the 300 U.S. military advisers and special operations forces expected to go to Iraq are now in Baghdad to help Iraqi forces combat Sunni militants, the Defense Department has said.
The arrival of U.S. forces was announced as combatants with the ISIS took control of all border crossings with Syria and Jordan.
ISIS insurgents have gained control throughout most of northern Iraq, but Iraqi military spokesman Major General Qassim Atta says all towns on the road between Samarra and Baghdad are still under its control.
However, ISIS militants are fighting in towns as close as Fallujah, less than an hour away to the west.
Getting closer: ISIS has taken control of the towns Al Waleed, Trbeil and Qaim, erasing Iraq’s border with Syria and Jordan. The Sunni combatants are fighting in towns like Fallujah, less than an hour away from Baghdad
Kingmaker: Kurdish President Massoud Barzani, right, shakes hands with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at the presidential palace in Irbil yesterday. Kerry insists the deployment of U.S. forces is ‘not intervention’
Yesterday U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged leaders of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region to stand with Baghdad and played down the deployment of American military forces, saying it does not equate to ‘intervention’.
Speaking to U.S. journalist Andrea Mitchell, Kerry called the deployment an ‘advisory’ mission, which includes ‘planning, advising, some training and assisting’.
‘We are not here in a combat role. We are not here to fight. And the president has no intention – none whatsoever – of returning American combat troops in Iraq to go back to where we were,’ he said.
On Capitol Hill, senators who left a closed briefing with senior Obama administration officials expressed hope Iraq could soon form a new government, perhaps in the next week, facilitating greater U.S. military action against ISIS.
Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who attended that meeting, backed what he described as an advancing American strategy.
Nowhere to go: Men and women stand in a temporary displacement camp for Iraqis caught-up in the fighting in and around the city of Mosul yesterday. Tens of thousands of people have now fled Iraq’s second largest city
Displaced: Children walk with bottles of water in a field beside the temporary refugee camp outside Mosul. Their families fled the city after it was overrun by ISIS militants earlier this month
At the Pentagon, Navy Rear Adm. John Kirby told reporters the troops in Baghdad included two teams of special forces and about 90 advisers, intelligence analysts, commandos and some other support personnel needed to set up a joint operations center in the Iraqi capital.
Another four teams of special forces would arrive in the next few days, Kirby said.
Those troops, added to the approximately 360 other U.S. forces that are in and around the embassy in Baghdad to perform security, would bring the total U.S military presence in Iraq to about 560.
Kirby also said the U.S. was conducting up to 35 surveillance missions over Iraq daily to provide intelligence on the situation on the ground as Iraqi troops battle the aggressive and fast-moving insurgency.
President Barack Obama last week announced he would send as many as 300 advisers into Iraq to assess and advise Iraqi security forces.
Part of that plan involved setting up two joint operating centers — one in Baghdad and the other in northern Iraq, where a lot of the fighting has taken place.
Support: Nearly half the U.S. military advisers pledged by President Obama to aid Iraq are now in Baghdad setting up operations to help combat the ISIS insurgency. Pictured above are Iraqi volunteers in Karbala
The teams, largely made up of Army Green Berets, will evaluate the readiness of the Iraqi troops and their senior headquarters commanders in an effort to determine how best the U.S. can bolster the security force and where other additional advisers might be needed.
Kirby said the initial assessments from the teams could be completed in the next two weeks to three weeks, but he said there was no timeline for how long the troops would be in Iraq.
‘I don’t have a fixed date for you as a deadline or an end date, but it’s very clear this will be a limited, short-term mission,’ he said.
He said the insurgency was well organized and aided by foreign fighters and Sunni sympathizers in the country.
The briefing for all senators Tuesday evening was led by Anne Patterson, the top U.S. diplomat for the Mideast, and included military and intelligence officials.
‘There is some hope that a new government can be formed fairly soon,’ Graham told reporters afterward.
ISIS militants have gotten as close to Baghdad as the town of Fallujah, just 44 miles away. Above, ISIS militants are pictured patrolling the town on Saturday
He said U.S. airstrikes probably would be necessary at some point, but accepted the Obama administration’s rationale that first a more inclusive Iraqi government must be formed that peels off moderate Sunnis.
Graham said the U.S. could start hitting the Sunni extremists at their bases in Syria, however.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., similarly urged U.S. action against the rebels’ commanders and supply lines.
‘This is not about saving Iraq or saving the government of Iraq or about building a country in Iraq,’ Rubio said. ‘That’s a long-term goal for the Iraqi people. This is an urgent counterterrorism situation that our country faces. It grows more dire by the moment. Our options become more limited by the moment.’
Both senators stressed the need for the U.S. to help defend Jordan. Graham said the threat of extremists extending their efforts from Syria and Iraq into Jordan was made very clear by the administration.
