Carter Willing To Send Attack Helicopters, ‘Accompanying Advisers’ On The

And, he said, the Pentagon is prepared to deploy advisers and attack helicopters-if the prime minister of Iraq wants them-to the region to “finish the job”.

Iraqi forces advanced on the western Iraqi city Ramadi this week, capturing a neighborhood on the outskirts of the provincial capital of Anbar Province from IS militants.

Defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant globally and at home requires leveraging the militant organization in its “parent tumor” of Syria and Iraq, Defense Secretary Ash Carter told the Senate Armed Services Committee today.

Obama alluded to the new commando force when he said in an Oval Office address Sunday that thousands of Iraqi and Syrian ground forces are trying to retake territory from the Islamic State and that USA special operations forces are being deployed to “accelerate that offensive”.

Also during the hearing, Carter expressed frustration with Sunni Arab allies who he said could do more to help with the effort against the Islamic State.

He and other military sources said Iraqi forces had also retaken the Anbar Operations Command headquarters, which lies at a fork of the Euphrates River on the northern side of the city. And it shows that training, advising and assisting is the right approach.

On Wednesday, Iraqi forces were preparing to push farther into the center of the Islamic State-held city of Ramadi.

Getting people out will be more hard. “We will do more of what works going forward”, he added. A spokesman for Iraq’s counter-terrorism forces said that strategy has been successful.

According to Pentagon officials, a series of heavy U.S. airstrikes against Ramadi, the capital of the Iraqi Anbar Province, have killed at least 350 ISIS fighters in the past week.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Wednesday the USA was ready to send in attack helicopters and “accompanying advisors” to help the ISF retake the city, if requested by Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi.

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, chairman of the panel, asked Carter whether he agrees with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about ISIS not being contained.

“While we certainly have the capability to furnish a USA component to such a ground force, we have not recommended this course of action for several reasons”, Carter said.

“I am certain it will fall, and we will assist in the making of it fall”, he said.

“We are very hopeful that Ramadi will be liberated before the end of this year”, he said.

The recapture was a significant achievement in the battle to wrest neighborhoods in and around Ramadi from the Islamic State’s grasp.

Linda Robinson, a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corp., a federally funded think tank, says the raids and follow-on exploitation of intelligence gained through interrogation of captured IS leaders will significantly increase pressure on the extremist group.

He told The Associated Press on Wednesday the neighbourhood is the backbone of Daesh’s structure in Ramadi.

But even as Carter and Selva highlighted progress made against the terrorist group, Selva said that 40 percent of US war planes return each day without having struck targets in Iraq or Syria.