The troops, drawn from US special operations forces, will assist the Iraqi military to develop and execute a counter-offensive against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis). Their mission is likely to spread to the selection of targets for any future air strikes, but Obama stopped short of accepting a plea from Baghdad to order US air power into the skies over Iraq immediately.
Instead, Obama said the option of air strikes would be held in reserve. Any such strikes would be “targeted” and “precise”, Obama said, warning that the fate of the country “hangs in the balance”.
The fighting continued in Iraq on Thursday as Isis militants fought Iraqi troops in an intense battle the at the Baiji oil refinery. The facility, the country's largest, is between the cities of Mosul and Tikrit, both seized by Isis last week.
Mindful of the long shadow cast by the last Iraq war, Obama said the deployment of military advisers, expected to be taken from US special operations forces, would not be drawn into combat. Only Iraq would be able to heal the sectarian divisions ripping the country apart, he said.
“American combat troops are not going to be fighting in Iraq again,” he said. “We do not have the ability to simply solve this problem by sending in tens of thousands of troops and committing the kinds of blood and treasure that has already been expended in Iraq.”
However, he said it was in America's national interest not to see “an all-out civil war in Iraq”, warning that it could become a haven for terrorists.
The lack of reliable intelligence identifying clear targets against Isis, which is embedded in several towns and cities it recently captured in the Sunni-dominated north, is one factor holding the White House back from launching strikes.
The contingent of special forces will train and advise Iraq’s troops, who crumbled in northern Iraq last week in the face of the rapid advance of Sunni militants. They will be deployed in several teams comprised of about a dozen , embedded into “joint operations centres” with the Iraqi military, a concept borrowed from the 2007-2008 US troop surge.
The teams will first be based in Baghdad, primarily at senior-level command centres and then at brigade level, with a focus on assessing what additional support is required by the Iraqi military. Senior administration officials said they might later be based outside the capital in places such as northern Iraq.
Their presence on the ground, and close to the field of battle, is also intended to provide the US with intelligence that could be used to guide any air or missile strikes.
