Obama Set To Announce US Boots On The Ground In Syria, Russia Threatens Deployment "Unacceptable"

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Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/30/2015 14:51 -0400

When the US media began airing helmet cam footage of Delta Force executing a prison break at an ISIS compound last week we suggested that Washington was making an effort to prepare the American public for more boots on the ground in Iraq and the possibility of ground troops in Syria.
The catalyst: Russia and Iran. Put simply, the US has been embarrassed by Moscow and Tehran’s coordinated effort to rout the Sunni extremists backed by Riyadh, Doha, and Ankara operating in Iraq and Syria and now, as Baghdad and Kabul threaten to turn to The Kremlin for help in the face of American ineptitude, the Pentagon is desperate to show that the US can still be effective at fighting terrorism.
So while John Kerry wanders around (hopefully not on a bike) in Vienna in a futile effort to get Saudi Arabia and Turkey to sit at the same table and talk rationally with Russia and Iran, the US military is contemplating how to insert itself into the battle without sparking a world war.
For its part, Baghdad has informed the Western media that it neither wants nor needs US help fighting ISIS (that’s what all the Iran-backed militias are for) and so instead, The White House may be on the verge of sending spec ops to Syria. 

• OBAMA ADMIN. MAY ANNOUNCE SPECIAL OPS FORCES IN SYRIA:CNBC/RTRS

Here's Reuters:

The United States will send 20 to 30 special operations forces to Syria to serve as military advisers in the fight against Islamic State, a U.S. official said.

The additional U.S. troops will operate in a limited "advise and assist" capacity, without changing President Barack Obama's overall mission to combat the militant group, a separate U.S. official said.

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Obama: No boots on the ground in Syria

CNN

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Published on Aug 30, 2013

The president comments on the ongoing situation in Syria, saying any operation would be a "limited, narrow attack."

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Judge Napolitano: Syria Resolution Intentionally Vague So Obama Can Put Boots On The Ground

Jessy Tomy

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Published on Sep 5, 2013

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: It's a tremendous amount of wiggle room for a couple of reasons. As a practical matter, as your previous guest Aaron just said, when you send missiles into a country, you need boots on the ground to guide the missiles where they're going to land. So Secretary Kerry may very well shrewdly have been mincing words. The government considers military troops out of uniform, out of uniform, or CIA in their nonuniform garb not to be 'boots on the ground.'

So I would have asked Secretary Kerry, will the American military or will American intelligence agents be on the ground, whether you consider them boots or not? It's inconceivable that we can send the type of missiles over there that the president and his Republican allies in Congress now contemplate, Sen. McCain leading the charge, without some American human beings, whether they're wearing boots or not, to be on the ground. So, Secretary Kerry, in my view, was misleading the Congress.

Now here's the Constitutional issue. The Constitution says only the Congress can declare war but the president wages it. The president can't declare war and Congress can't wage it. What does that mean? That means that once the Congress gives authorization for the president to bring down either the chemical weaponry of the Assad regime, or as Senator McCain wants, the Assad regime itself, the Congress can't pull the president back. The Congress can't tell the president how to wage war.

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NAPOLITANO: Our conversation now is largely hypothetical. No judge is going to say, 'oh, the president violated this resolution; I'm going to sign a piece of paper enjoining the president.' No American judge will do that. But the president, once unleashed by Congress will be free to put all the boots on the ground he wants no matter what the resolution says. John McCain knows that, John Kerry knows that, and the president knows. The American people need to know it.

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Broken Promises: Obama Will Now Put Boots To The Ground In Syria Against ISIS

Western Journalism

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Published on Oct 30, 2015

A little more than two years ago, President Obama promised to never put American boots on the ground in Syria.

I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria. I will not pursue an open-ended action like Iraq or Afghanistan. There would be no American boots on the ground. Any action we take would be limited.

But on Friday, that's exactly what he did. Around 50 special forces commandos will be deployed in Syria.

That mission is to build the capacity of local forces so they can be even more effective than they've already been in taking the fight to ISIL on the ground inside of Syria.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest refused to acknowledge any broken promises Obama made two years ago, claiming the "no boots on the ground" quote was out of context.

You've read one quote from, that's, that to be fair is out of context. When the president has talked about combat situations, the president has been quite clear that he does not contemplate a large-scale, long-term ground combat operation.

So does that mean the less than 50 commandos are not real "boots on the ground"?

That element of our strategy - to build their capacity - has yielded progress. So the president wants to intensify that assistance we're providing and one way you can intensify that assistance is to pair them up with experts - with some of the smartest, bravest, most effective fighters in the United States military. And that's exactly what we're doing.

In other words, American military forces are to wear sneakers so the Obama administration can accurately claim no boots are on the ground.