The United States said on Tuesday it was deploying an elite new force of special operations troops to Iraq to conduct raids, free hostages, capture Islamic State leaders and carry out "unilateral operations" in neighboring Syria.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter offered few details on the new expeditionary group. It is separate from a previously announced deployment of up to 50 U.S. special operations troops in Syria to coordinate on the ground with U.S.-backed rebels fighting in a civil war raging since 2011.

Carter said the new force will be larger than the one being sent into Syria, but did not specify how many troops it will include.

The Pentagon chief said the new deployment of this "specialized expeditionary targeting force" was being carried out in coordination with the government of Iraq and would aid Iraqi government security forces and Kurdish peshmerga forces.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/12/01/us-mideast-crisis-usa-military-idUSKBN0TK50G20151201#w0qr4m4RxZzxsCx7.99

The mission creeps, the promises exposed as lies.

They are advising the public to avoid large crowds.

Stay safe. I hope that this specific warning means that thy have good intel and are closing in on some more would be killers.

Escalation and expansion of US involvement. She wants to creep the mission before she's won a single primary.

Let me get out in front of this idiocy. No troops in Iraq or Syria.

Aside from the suicide bombing, the method of attack was all too familiar to us in the states. Only here, it is usually a lone gunman with interpersonal failings.

Not to be too callous morbid, but the body count per attacker in Paris (if it were indeed 8) is less than the body count for the single shooters in Newtown, Aurora and Virginia Tech.

Here, we live through the almost routine mass shootings. The pattern is the same. Heavily armed and ammoed, including automatic rifles arriving unannounced to a heavily populated and enclosed area.

In Paris, there were at least 8 of them in coordination. I shudder to think what could be done here with the widely accessible arsenal.

of Iraq and the slaughter of a million Iraqis. Iraq, who had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks,had not attacked us and were not about to attack us.

The Iraq war, championed and pushed by Hillary gave rise to ISIS, and it was predictable and foreseeable.

We are still suffering the aftermath of the vote. It is why her then poor judgment (or worse) still matters.

I do not trust anyone to respond appropriately today who was so very very wrong then.

President Obama’s decision to expand the U.S. war effort in Iraq and Syria is a reflection of the conflicting pressures on a commander in chief who doubts that military force alone can end the conflicts in those countries, but who also feels compelled to act in the face of a humanitarian catastrophe and a growing threat to the United States.

The president on Friday said that he was sending about 50 Special Operations troops to northern Syria to work with Kurdish and Arab fighters battling the Islamic State. The deployment, though small, marks the first full-time deployment of U.S. forces to the dangerous and chaotic country.

The troops will be accompanied by more U.S. attack planes, based across the border in Turkey, and plans for more joint raids — led by Iraqi counterterrorism forces — to capture and kill Islamic State leaders.

* * *

Without a clear overarching strategy to resolve the conflict, “we’re looking at things in a granular way,” the official said. The goal, for now, is simply to incrementally reinforce those areas that are working and abandon initiatives that are not.

Obama began his second term having brought one war in Iraq to an end and pledging to bring home America’s ground troops from a second in Afghanistan. To that end he set hard limits on U.S. deployments and firm time frames for the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

Before deploying forces, Obama would regularly demand that his commanders explain the “theory of the case” behind the moves. The phrase is evocative of the president’s legal training and his deep skepticism that U.S. military power can bring lasting change to broken societies. He wanted assurances that the operations would work as intended as well as coherent explanations of how and when they would end.

As he nears the end of his presidency, Obama faces the prospect that he will leave office with ground forces deployed to three combat zones.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/after-promising-to-end-two-wars-obama-may-leave-three-behind/2015/10/31/01f3f70a-7fe3-11e5-beba-927fd8634498_story.html