U.S. to intensify operations against ISIS in Iraq, Syria

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carter said he expects more actions like the one last week that freed dozens of captives but left an American commando dead in Iraq.

After the pesky “JV team” could no longer be ignored, the president, confident that his decision to pull all of our troops out of Iraq was the correct and moral thing to do, promised that he would not send American troops to the region for combat operations.

Carter said the US-led effort will include more strikes against the Islamic State’s “high-value targets as our intelligence improves, and also its oil enterprise, which is a critical pillar of IS’s financial infrastructure”. Only one option is open to the USA: putting boots on the ground after all.

RAF planes flying from Cyprus and drones based in Kuwait are part of that coalition.

There’s no sign though of a significantly enhanced regular US Army deployment to support this expansion in raids.

After the session, lawmakers said they felt there was momentum toward a diplomatic solution ahead of a global meeting on Syria later this week.

The USA has done a few special operations raids in Syria.

Mr Carter said the fight against IS would now concentrate mostly on Raqqa, the militants’ declared capital in Syria, and Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province in western Iraq.

Allen said the United States military recently began asking its European allies to join it at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey where the U.S. is being allowed to launch USA fighter aircraft and surveillance missions into Syria.

McCain said, “Our policy of ISIL (an acronym for the Islamic State) first fails to understand that ISIL, for all of the threat it poses, is actually just a symptom of a deeper problem, the struggle for power and sectarian identity now raging across the Middle East, the epicenter of which is Iraq and Syria”.

Carter and Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made clear to the Senate Armed Services panel that they saw little overlap between USA and Russian military goals.

According to Reuters, two us officials who spoke anonymously said any step taken would be tailored so as to put specific, limited military objectives in the correct place in both the countries. While Moscow says its airstrikes are aimed at ISIS, Washington believes the raids are helping Syrian President Bashar al-Assad push back moderate rebels battling the regime.

The USA now has about 3,300 troops in Iraq to train and advise Iraqi forces and to protect US facilities.

Carter’s outline of the new United States approach came under attack by Republicans on the committee.

Iraq’s government said Wednesday it didn’t ask for – and doesn’t need – the “direct action on the ground” promised by the Pentagon, NBC News reported.

Kerry said only that it had been “a good meeting” and more about the talks would be announced later.

“I can’t say what Vladimir Putin is thinking about Assad’s future, but I can tell you what his behaviour suggests”.