{"id":3146,"date":"2015-10-31T09:27:57","date_gmt":"2015-10-31T09:27:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5917.temp.domains\/~iriacom\/\/news\/?p=3146"},"modified":"2015-10-31T09:27:57","modified_gmt":"2015-10-31T09:27:57","slug":"us-to-send-more-than-50-troops-to-advise-moderate-opposition-in-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/us-to-send-more-than-50-troops-to-advise-moderate-opposition-in-syria\/","title":{"rendered":"US to send more than 50 troops to advise ‘moderate opposition’ in Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

The White House spokesman has confirmed that US is planning to send up a small number of special forces operatives to advise “moderate opposition” in Syria on the ground.<\/p>\n

Josh Earnest refused to give more information to the reporters during the briefing citing operational security. He insisted that the mission of advisers in Syria will\u00a0be to build the capacity of local forces to fight Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS or ISIL).<\/p>\n

Earnest reiterated that the administration is not planning to put “boots on the ground,”<\/em> otherwise they would\u00a0be sending“more than 50 troops.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The White House press secretary insisted that the deployment is merely an \u201cintensification\u201d <\/em>of the US campaign against IS that began in September 2014, noting that US special forces have conducted a hostage rescue operation in Syria last year, and a combat raid against an IS leader this spring.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have shown a desire to intensify those elements of our strategy that have shown the most promise,\u201d<\/em> he told reporters, referring to the improvement in combat capabilities of Iraqi forces trained and advised by US troops.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese forces do not have a combat mission,\u201d<\/em> Earnest said repeatedly.<\/p>\n

Asked about the legal framework for sending forces to Syria, Earnest cited the 2001 congressional authorization to use military force, passed following the September 11 terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n

The presence of any sort of US troops in Syria was not authorized<\/a>\u00a0by either the elected government in Damascus or by the\u00a0United Nations.<\/p>\n

Though Earnest did not say specifically which forces the US advisers will be aiding, he did refer to a group 45 kilometers outside the IS capital of Raqqa, which the media has been calling ‘Syrian Democratic Forces.’<\/p>\n

US aircraft delivered ammunition to the group earlier this month. However, the Arab militias have told reporters that most of the supplies ended up with the Kurdish YPG, whose promised advance towards Raqqa has stalled due to the protests of the US ally Turkey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The White House spokesman has confirmed that US is planning to send up a small number of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[44,1,125],"tags":[6,14,15,5,113,13,11],"class_list":["post-3146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east","category-news","category-united-states","tag-defense","tag-isis","tag-militants","tag-military","tag-security","tag-syria","tag-terrorism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/US-train-Syrian-rebels.jpg?fit=690%2C388&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-OK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3147,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3146\/revisions\/3147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}