For years Obama kept our troops in an advisory role in Iraq. But now they are being allowed to fight on the front lines as they attempt to push ISIS out of Mosul:
FOX NEWS – After three years of being told they could not go to the front lines, U.S. troops advising Iraqi forces as they evict ISIS from Mosul no longer face those tight restrictions, according to the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, as the new defense secretary stood by his side in Baghdad.
“It is true that we are operating closer and deeper into the Iraqi formation,” Townsend told reporters travelling with Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. “We adjusted our posture during the east Mosul fight and embedded advisers a bit further down into the formation.”
Townsend, who began his career in Baghdad as a Colonel leading a Struyker brigade during the surge in 2007, commands more than 6,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria.
“I have all the authorities I need to prosecute our fight and I am confident that if I were to need more that my leadership would provide those,” Townsend said.
Mattis, a former Marine four-star general who served several tours in Iraq, is on his first visit to Iraq in his new civilian role. He is tasked with presenting President Trump a new plan to defeat ISIS — a plan due on Feb. 27. Mattis suggested the former restrictions could be further loosened as he weighs whether to send more troops, and the Coalition prepares to expand the fight to Raqqa, the ISIS capital in Syria.
“We owe some degree of confidentiality so we don’t expose to the enemy what we have in mind as to the timing of operations,” Mattis said.
Call it the Trump effect, but U.S. commanders began loosening the restrictions on forward deployed troops back in November as Iraqi forces pushed into Mosul, a tough fight that began in October and is now entering a second phase in western Mosul. When the U.S. military returned to Iraq three years ago, the Obama administration refused to say U.S. troops were in combat or refer to them as “boots on the ground.” The White House refused to allow these “advisers” to go to the front lines.
Asked whether he thought U.S. troops will be asked to leave Iraq after the military clears Mosul of ISIS fighters, the top U.S. commander and the defense secretary said U.S. troops will be in Iraq for some time.
“I don’t anticipate that we’ll be asked to leave by the government of Iraq after Mosul,” Townsend said. “The government recognizes this is a complex fight. I wouldn’t want to put a timeline on it.”
Mattis added: “This is a partnership. There have been a lot of rocky times out here. I imagine we’ll be in this fight for a while and we’ll stand by each other.”
Mattis also pointed out that we are not in Iraq to seize their oil. Heh. he’s got to say that after Trump advocated taking Iraq’s oil on the campaign trail.