White House: Up to 1,500 more troops headed to Iraq

This is the kind of thing that just could wait until after the voters had cast their ballots in Tuesday’s crucial midterm elections.

On Friday, a Reuters report hit the wires which indicated that the White House planned to increase the number of American “combat advisors” in Iraq by an unknown number. The coming troop hike was characterized as “significant.”

The U.S. military has drawn up plans to significantly increase the number of American forces in Iraq, which now total around 1,400, as Washington seeks to bolster Iraqi forces battling the Islamic State, U.S. officials told Reuters on Friday.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to offer details. The United States aims to help advise and train Iraqi and Kurdish forces battling Islamic State fighters who swept into much of northern Iraq.

Within minutes, the White House confirmed that at least 1,000 and up to 1,500 more American troops would be introduced into Iraq, bringing the total number of American troops in theater to just under 3,000.

Additionally, the White House revealed that it would request $5.6 billion for “Overseas Contingency Operations” that will fund the operations aimed at rolling back and destroying the Islamic State.

CENTCOM Commander Gen. Lloyd Austin and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel are at the White House Friday briefing a bipartisan congressional group invited by the president.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey hinted at the announcement during an Oct. 30 briefing at the Pentagon.

The increased number of troops will allow the U.S. to spread it forces to additional locations across Iraq.

Odd that the national press did not pick up on the fact that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff hinted at a sharp increase in the number of troops in Iraq just days before the election, but did devote much scrutiny to this bombshell. Quite odd.

With the number of troops in Iraq roughly doubling every quarter, there should be upwards of 12,000 troops in Iraq by the fall of 2016. While that is an unlikely prospect, the willingness of the administration to commit more soldiers to supposed advisory roles in Iraq is worthy of note. Who believes that this will be the final increase in the number of American soldiers in Iraq before the end of the Obama presidency?

Perhaps Hillary Clinton can run on a platform of returning responsibility for Iraq’s destiny back into the hands of Iraqis. It worked once already.