Up to 450 more troops to Iraq,
WASHINGTON President Obama will send up to 450 more U.S. troops to Iraq to step up the training of local forces as they battle the Islamic State, officials said Wednesday.
“This train, advise and assist mission builds on lessons learned during the past several months and is just one aspect of our commitment to support the Iraqi Security Forces,” spokesman Josh Earnest said.
Earnest said Obama has also ordered “the expedited delivery of essential equipment and materiel” to Iraqi forces seeking to reclaim territory captured by the Islamic State.
In addition to the 450 new trainers, the plan calls for stopping the flow of “foreign fighters” into and out of both Iraq and neighboring Syria. Another goal is getting more Sunni Muslims, a minority in Shiite-dominated Iraq, to roll back the gains made by the Islamic State.
The new order brings the overall U.S. troop level remaining in Iraq to about 3,550, the vast majority of them involved in some sort of training projects.
The Iraqi government requested the U.S. troop advisers in part to reach out to the Sunni population in the region, Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said Wednesday. The troops should begin that mission in six to eight weeks.
Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said the administration has been looking at these changes for months, in consultation with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and other Iraqi officials. Obama and Abadi met over the weekend on the sidelines of the G-7 summit in Germany.
The review included the impact of “setbacks” in Anbar province, the focus of the revamped plan.
House Speaker John Boehner, R- Ohio, said he supports the additional aid, but he added that Obama lacks an overall strategy “to win” the fight against the Islamic State.