Friday, May 22, 2015

Special Ops to Obama: Let Us Fight ISIS, Already

 They’re supposed to be at the forefront of the battle against ISIS. But U.S. special operators say the Obama administration’s restrictive rules of war are harming their mission.

The Daily Beast
 STENNIS SPACE CENTER, MS - FEBRUARY 20:  Moonlight active-duty Special Boat Team members from the Navy's Gulf Coast team participate in direct action drills on the Pearl River on February 20, 2013 at the John C. Stennis Space Center in Stennis Space Center, Mississippi. Throughout the six hour training evolution four Special Operations Craft-Riverine boats, or SOC-R's, patrolled the river in formation looking for instructors posing as enemy personnel on the river banks. Special Warfare Combatant-Craft Crewmen, or SWCCs, are members of the United States Navy's Special Boat Teams and are responsible for insertion, extraction, and combat fire support for the U.S. Navy SEALs.
. . . "They were eager to talk about their aggravation over fighting by remote in Iraq and Syria: having to advise Iraqis, Kurdish Peshmerga, and rebel Syrian fighters from afar instead of joining them in battle.

“ 'We are doing everything through cellphones… It’s hard to do much when you can’t go outside the wire,” said one special operator, using the military jargon for the perimeter of a base.

"They blame the hands-off approach on an Obama administration unwilling to risk even small numbers of American lives in battle, burned by the fallout of the loss of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, and intent on preserving the legacy of President Barack Obama’s troop drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“ 'You can’t say ‘We’re with you every step of the way, except when you are going on combat operations,’” said a former senior special operations official briefed on the ISIS campaign." . . .

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