SECURITY_ Up to 1,000 more U.S. troops in Iraq?

WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Up to 1,000 more U.S. troops in Iraq?

By Tara Copp | June 9, 2015 | 6:11 pm



U.S. soldiers prepare to participate in a training mission with Iraqi Army soldier, right, outside Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, May 27, 2015. (AP Photo)

The Pentagon urged caution over news reports saying that President Obama is "close" to considering sending 1,000 additional troops to Iraq to speed the training of forces to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Having the extra manpower is one of several options under consideration, as the administration tries to figure out how to significantly improve Iraq's capability to defend itself against gains by the Islamic State.

Other options include having the U.S. train Sunni tribes directly and a new approach to directly distribute thousands of weapons in Iraq.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said Tuesday that internal discussions were ongoing at the Pentagon and have come to the conclusion that "it is better to train more Iraqi security forces. And we are now working through a strategy on how to to do that," Warren said. "Here at the Pentagon we are developing courses of action that will produce those results."

Asked earlier Tuesday whether one of the new options is sending more troops to Iraq, Warren said "we have to complete the plan. I am not going to reveal the plan before it is done. "

A defense official cautioned that the 1,000 additional forces reported by CNN may not be accurate.

During the G-7 summit on Monday, Obama said the U.S. was concerned about the numbers of Iraqi recruits who are able to be trained at the sites.

"One of the things that we have to improve is the speed with which we're training Iraqi forces, and I think the president also spoke to that," said State Department spokesman Jeff Rathke. "We're reviewing a range of plans for how that could be done."

Warren told reporters at the daily briefing that the Department of Defense is hitting its initial goal of getting 9,000 Iraqi security forces trained a year. In the first 10 months since a force of 3,000 U.S. military personnel returned to Iraq to stand up training sites, more than 8,000 Iraqi have graduated from the six-week basic training course and another 3,000 are in the pipeline.

Warren said the Pentagon's desire to increase the numbers of Iraqis being trained reflects the quality of the forces coming out of the program. However none of the Iraqis who the U.S. and coalition have trained have been sent to any of the significant battles in Iraq. For months, Iraqi officials have complained that those forces did not leave the training sites with adequate weapons or equipment.

Until recently, the Iraqi government took the lead in distributing weapons directly to the trained forces.

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