US should consider deploying ground troops to Iraq: Army general
A high-ranking US Army general says the Pentagon should consider deploying “support” troops on the ground with Iraqi forces if there is no progress in the fight against the ISIL terrorist group.
If the US military is not making the kind of progress it needs in the next few months, "we should probably absolutely consider embedding some soldiers, then see if that would make a difference," General Raymond Odierno, the current Chief of Staff of the Army, said Wednesday.
"That doesn't mean they would be fighting, but ... they would be abetting them and moving with them," he told a Pentagon news conference. "I think that's an option we should present to the president when the time is right."
Odierno, who is retiring this week, acknowledged that while US troops could defeat the ISIL terrorists, they could not solve the broader political and economic problems plaguing Iraq and Syria.
"We could probably go in there with a certain amount of American force and ... defeat ISIL. The problem is we would be right back where we are today six months later," he told reporters.
Odierno commanded the 4th Infantry Division during the invasion of Iraq and served as commanding general of US forces in Iraq from September 2008 through September 2010.
The outgoing general further noted that the fight against terrorists requires the involvement of all countries in the region and admitted the situation has deteriorated in Iraq over the years despite US airstrikes against ISIL.
The US and its Western allies have carried out airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria since last year without a UN mandate but the military campaign has been strongly criticized for failing to stop ISIL advances.
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