U.S. troops at Taqaddum to help Iraqis plan fight for Ramadi

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

World | Fri Jun 12, 2015 8:49am EDT

U.S. troops at Taqaddum to help Iraqis plan fight for Ramadi

WASHINGTON | BY DAVID ALEXANDER

President Barack Obama has said American forces being sent to a new operations center in the heart of the war against Islamic State will not engage in combat, but they will do almost everything but fight to support the beleaguered Iraqi forces.

U.S. defense officials say the tasks of the troops going to Taqaddum air base will range from advising Iraqi commanders how to ensure soldiers have enough bullets to integrating air power into combat plans.

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Americans are already operating at several other bases around the country to train, advise and support the Iraqis, who have had limited success against the Islamist militants occupying large swathes of the country in the last 18 months.

But the operation at Taqaddum, close to the Euphrates river 45 miles (75 km) west of Baghdad between major cities held by Islamic State, puts U.S. forces at the crux of the fight.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/12/us-mideast-crisis-usa-taqaddum-idUSKBN0OS1DI20150612

[TwilightGardener]

1. Wouldn't it have been easier to have helped Iraqi forces hang on to Ramadi BEFORE it fell?

The US military wrote it off as not really important in March and April, barely stepped up airstrikes, even though it had been under siege for some time. Why weren't advisors and spotters moved in sooner? There have been US troops as advisors at a base in Anbar already. Who's running this clown show? BTW, I wonder if Dempsey and Ass Carter ever got to the bottom of which CentCom officer "leaked" the plans to retake Mosul in February. They swore they were going to investigate that. Why would that take an investigation? CentCom knows who did it. I think some games are being played, and we're not in on the joke.