Top US Commander: More Troops May Be Heading to Iraq

Speaking by teleconference from Iraq, MacFarland was asked whether the USA should use carpet bombing strikes against Islamic State militants, a tactic proposed by Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz.

The commander of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria said he is drawing up a variety of proposals for accelerating the fight against the terrorist group – some of which may require more USA troops on the ground in Iraq.

“We are bound by the laws of armed conflict”, Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland said Monday, when asked about that strategy”.

“I really don’t want to get into specifics in the terms of whether or not something is on or off the table”, MacFarland said.

Mission creep much? The Iraqi military has shown itself unable to push back the Islamic State, so the Pentagon is considering requesting more US troops to touch boots to Iraqi soil to more provide training and support services.

Lise Grande, the UN’s humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, said Sunday that $861 million (795 million euros) in aid was needed to reach Iraq’s “most vulnerable”, some 7.3 million people. The U.S. has sent roughly 3,700 troops to Iraq, while an additional 16 nations part of the coalition have sent a total of 2,400 troops.

He says that while Iraqi leaders didn’t accept the offer of U.S. Apache helicopters during the ultimately successful fight for Ramadi, they may decide to use the aircraft in a later battle.

MacFarland noted that Russian Federation has been accused of indiscriminate bombing in northwest Syria and “right now, we have the moral high ground and I think that’s where we need to stay”.

Since then, MacFarland said, “We have shifted form pure counter insurgency to combined arms” operations using coalition airpower to back up local forces on the ground in shrinking the areas controlled by ISIS.

“And we’re the United States of America and we have a set of guiding principles and those effect the way we as professional soldiers, airmen, sailors, Marines, conduct ourselves on the battlefield”.

More broadly, MacFarland said the victory by Iraqi security forces in Ramadi was a turning point in the campaign, but he predicted more hard fighting ahead.

“Again civilians are paying the price for Iraq’s failure to rein in the out-of-control militias”, Joe Stork, HRW’s deputy Middle East director, said in a statement.

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