Tony Capaccio / Bloomberg.com & Mark Landler and David E. Sanger / The New York Times – 2014-11-07 21:47:59
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-07/obama-to-seek-added-5-6-billion-for-islamic-state-fight.html
Obama Approves Doubling
US Military Force in Iraq
Tony Capaccio / Bloomberg.com
(November 7, 2014) — President Barack Obama has approved doubling the US military force in Iraq and allowing troops to venture beyond headquarters already established in Baghdad and Erbil, in an escalation of the US effort to defeat Islamic State extremists.
Obama also is asking Congress to approve $5.6 billion in added Pentagon and State Department spending to fight the Sunni militants who have seized a swath of Iraq and Syria.
The president’s approval to send as many as 1,500 personnel is in addition to 1,600 he previously authorized, 1,400 of whom are in Iraq today protecting US facilities and assisting the Iraqi military. Troops that have been confined to Baghdad, the capital, and Erbil in Kurdish northern Iraq now will be permitted to train and advise Iraqi forces at a number of Iraqi military facilities, according to a White House statement.
“US troops will not be in combat, but they will be better positioned to support Iraqi security forces as they take the fight” to the Sunni extremists, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said today in the statement.
The first added troops will advise Iraqi forces in Anbar province, the location of the most intense fighting in Iraq, according to a defense official who asked not to be identified discussing deployment plans. Others will train and assist in northern Iraq, the official said.
Funding Sought
Obama’s funding request to Congress calls for $3.4 billion for US operations against Islamic State, according to a White House statement. An additional $1.6 billion is being sought to train and equip Iraqi and Kurdish security forces, while $520 million is being requested for State Department operations against the extremist group.
The request for more funds and troops was disclosed as Obama met at the White House with congressional leaders after Republican victories in this week’s midterm election. Obama said on Nov. 5 that he wants to discuss cooperation on issues, including his new request for a vote to explicitly authorize the US airstrikes that began in September in Iraq and Syria.
While welcoming Obama’s decision to seek authorization, Republican House Speaker John Boehner said in a statement today that presidents traditionally have written such a proposed resolution, sent it to Congress and “worked to build bipartisan support for its passage.”
If Obama takes that approach, Boehner said, “House Republicans will be ready to work with him to get it approved.”
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The commitment of US forces to the war against Islamic State has been a growing source of friction between the White House and the Pentagon, according to defense and intelligence officials.
Three officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters and internal policy debates, said that military officials, backed by US intelligence assessments, have argued for months that more American troops are needed to train, support and assist the Iraqi military in the fight to halt the extremists’ advances, defend strategic targets such as the Baiji oil refinery and the Haditha Dam, and in time begin retaking areas such as Mosul that have fallen.
While airstrikes alone have been helpful, the officials said, they are insufficient. One of them compared the president’s order to “degrade and ultimately defeat” Islamic State while not committing US combat forces to being ordered to pound in a nail without being given a hammer.
Combat Risks
The Iraqi security forces, the officials said, are demoralized and poorly led. They said there’s no quick fix to the dilemma, and the only answer to stemming Islamic State’s advances is sending more American and allied forces to advise and assist the Iraqis.
Asked if assisting could extend to combat situations, one of the officials said that it inevitably will, regardless of Obama’s vow not to send combat troops back to Iraq.
The increased funds to fight Islamic State would be an amendment to the administration’s pending $58.6 billion war operations budget for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1.
The cost of US air operations over Iraq and Syria as of Oct. 16 averaged $8.3 million a day, or $580 million since they began Aug. 8. The U.S and allies have flown more than 8,000 missions through Nov. 3, including combat strikes that have dropped or launched 2,178 munitions, according to US Central Command.
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Obama to Seek Congressional Backing for Military Campaign Against ISIS
Mark Landler and David E. Sanger / The New York Times
WASHINGTON (November 5, 2014) — President Obama said on Wednesday that he would seek specific authorization from Congress for the military campaign against the Islamic State, opening the door to a lengthy, potentially contentious debate over the nature and extent of American engagement in Iraq and Syria.
Mr. Obama’s announcement, at his post-election news conference, was not wholly unexpected. But it represented a significant shift from his earlier position that while he would welcome congressional backing, he had legal authority to take military action under existing statutes.
Administration officials said Mr. Obama still believed he had that authority, but with the elections over, he concluded that the time was right to petition Congress for more explicit authority.
“The world needs to know we are united behind this effort and that the men and women of our military deserve our clear and unified support,” Mr. Obama said, adding that he would begin a dialogue with congressional leaders when they come to the White House on Friday.
He also increased the pressure on Iran’s leaders ahead of a deadline this month to reach a nuclear deal, saying that the United States has now “presented to them a framework that would allow them to meet their peaceful energy needs,” without leaving Iran the ability to “break out and produce a nuclear weapon.”
The president suggested that he was now waiting for a political decision in Tehran about whether Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would accept that framework.
While Mr. Obama gave no specifics, he appeared to be referring to a plan under which Iran would ship much of its uranium stockpile to Russia, where it would be converted into fuel for the country’s single nuclear plant.
Iranian officials dismissed the report without fully denying it, but American officials have said they suspect a struggle is underway within the Iranian government on the wisdom of reaching an accord. “They have their own politics, and there’s a long tradition of mistrust between the two countries,” Mr. Obama said.
The president was guarded about the progress of the military operation against the Islamic State. He said it was too soon to say whether the United States and its allies were winning, noting that it would take a long time to upgrade Iraqi forces to the point where they could reclaim territory now held by the militants. He was even more circumspect about Syria.
“Our focus in Syria is not to solve the entire Syria situation, but rather to isolate the areas in which ISIL can operate,” he added, using an alternative name for the Islamic State.
That statement appeared somewhat at odds with a recent memo sent to the White House by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, in which he criticized the administration’s Syria policy for failing to connect the campaign against the Islamic State to the broader struggle against President Bashar al-Assad.
Mr. Hagel wrote that unless the United States clarified its intentions against the Assad regime, it would fail to enlist allies like Turkey and France for the battle against the Islamic State in Syria, since those countries are intent on ousting Mr. Assad. Other officials said that in internal debates, Mr. Hagel has not advocated taking a strong line against Mr. Assad, and in fact has echoed the Pentagon’s resistance to going to war with the Syrian government.
That will be one of the issues likely to come up in a congressional debate over authorization. Before the election, Congress passed limited authorization to pay for the training and equipping of Syrian rebels. Now the White House is seeking an authorization to use military force that would be tailored to a prolonged fight against ISIS.
Until now, the White House had justified its airstrikes in Iraq and Syria under two existing laws: a 2001 authorization passed after the 9/11 attacks, which Mr. Obama has invoked to carry out drone and missile strikes against suspected terrorists in Yemen and Somalia, and a 2002 authorization sought by President George W. Bush for the Iraq war.
“The idea is to right-size and update whatever authorization Congress provides to suit the current fight rather than previous fights,” Mr. Obama said. “We now have a different type of enemy.”
Lawmakers welcomed the announcement, even as they noted it would set off complicated political crosscurrents in both parties. Many lawmakers were privately relieved that the White House did not petition Congress before the midterm elections.
“This is an extended military campaign and it has nothing to do with the 9/11 authorization,” said Representative Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont. “It is expensive, long term, and it’s not clear where it’s going. You’re going to see a complicated debate in Congress.”
Among the issues he predicted would come up would be the deployment of American ground forces, which Mr. Obama has ruled out but which Mr. Welch said would almost certainly be needed to root out the militants.
Still, he added: “In some ways, it will probably be a better debate. People will have more latitude to consider it on the merits than they would have before the election.”
In part because the battle with the Islamic State is likely to last beyond Mr. Obama’s presidency — and soak up resources he wanted to commit elsewhere — there is an increasing sense that the White House is more eager than ever to strike even an agreement in principle with Iran by the Nov. 24 deadline for the end of negotiations.
Mr. Obama seemed intent on answering critics who have said he wants a deal too much. “Whether we can actually get a deal done, we’re going to have to find out over the next three to four weeks,” he said, suggesting that the “framework” given to Iran was essentially an effort to determine the sincerity of the country’s insistence that it was simply looking for a reliable way to produce fuel for nuclear reactors.
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