Backed Syrian rebels declare new offensive against Islamic State

Bush applauded Obama for deciding to deploy special forces.

The troops will be stationed there for weeks or months at a time, with additional Special Operations forces deployed to aid in raids, while the Kurdish and other local forces will fight as “Syrian Democratic Forces”.

Rhodes argued that the president had not gone back on his pledge of no United States troops in Syria.

“Deploying a handful of USA special operations forces to Syria will not change this situation significantly”, said Frederic Hof, former special adviser for the transition in Syria at the U.S. State Department. They said USA officials had no plans to supply any kind of surface-to-air missiles, known as MANPADs, to Syrian rebels, “While it is understandable for the opposition to want to strike directly against the Russians, proliferation of MANPADS into an area with a large terrorist presence is beyond unsafe”, one intelligence official added, referring to shoulder-fired heat-seeking missile weapons.

30 people joined the protest, holding signs and banners against this new escalation of USA military intervention.

Obama says USA troops won’t be fighting in Syria the way they did in the Iraq War with “battalions and occupations”. In the photo above, Syrian Kurdish fighter Delkhwaz Sheikh Ahmad, 22, sits with his sons, Dilyar, left, 3 and Ibrahim, 2, right, at his brother’s house in Suruc, on the Turkey-Syria border, as he prepares to leave for Kobani, Syria, to rejoin the fighting, Friday, October 17, 2014.

However, Kerry refused to rule out more US commandos being sent to Syria.

“I think we have a president who just doesn’t know what he’s doing”, Donald Trump, the party’s frontrunner in next year’s race for the White House, told CNN.

In a fierce assault that began by detonating two suicide vehicle bombs, Islamic State militants took the town of Maheen in the southwest of Homs province from government forces, a group monitoring the war said. “The margin for error diminishes considerably, and the consequences of either accidental or intentional fire on our ground forces-or Russian and Syrian forces-expand greatly”.

By embedding Special Forces with local Sunni anti-ISIS groups, Heras said the administration hopes to build up a multi-ethnic democratic Syrian coalition and facilitate coordination with Kurdish fighters to bring the fight to ISIS.

“The backbone of these forces are the Kurdish groups because of their experience fighting ISIS and their numbers”, said Redur Xelil, a spokesman for Syria’s dominant Kurdish force, the Y.P.G.

Republican Presidential hopeful Marco Rubio. That includes sending special aircrafts, including F-15 fighters and A-10s to the Incirlik air base in Turkey.

“A few have suggested that a better alternative would be to establish a ‘no fly zone” over Northern Syria to go after ISIS and pursue other objectives, including undercutting the regime of Assad.

Several U.S. officials, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the military moves were not created to increase diplomatic leverage in those negotiations.

You can not ignore that the United States is on a slope in Syria.