President Obama announced on Thursday that a contingent up to 300 'military advisers' will be sent to Iraq to bolster attempts to repel the advance of Islamist insurgents, but stopped short of ordering the air strikes demanded by Baghdad.
They will assist in helping the Iraqi military develop and execute a counteroffensive against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), a mission likely to spread to target selection - a prerequisite for future air strikes, currently lacking despite a massive recent US aerial intelligence push.
Obama said up to 300 military advisers will be deployed to Iraq, in 'joint operations centers' in Baghdad and northern Iraq to support the Iraqi military - a structure adapted from the 2007 US troop surge, which moved US forces and Iraqi forces into the same quarters in besieged and contested neighborhoods.
But Obama indicated US air power, likely from the deck of the USS George HW Bush, would be kept in reserve, 'prepared to take targeted and precise military action.'
The lack of reliable intelligence identifying clear targets from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (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.
Obama's announcement, which stopped short of authorising those air strikes, will disappoint the Iraqi government, which has formally requested the US to provide Iraq with the air power it lacks.
The Obama administration has said military involvement by US forces would not involve combat troops, and would be contingent on the Iraqi government making a concerted effort to bridge the sectarian divides threatening the breakup of the country.
Two US envoys, ambassadors Robert Beechcroft and senior State Department official Brett McGurk, have been scrambling through Iraq in recent days, reportedly to help broker a new Iraqi political consensus.
The White House is also facing pressure from Republican and Democratic hawks in Washington who are pushing for urgent air strikes to arrest the advance of Isis.
The US military rebuilt the Iraqi military from scratch, largely in its image, after Washington opted to disband it in 2003, a catalyst for the bloody insurgency that killed nearly 4,500 US troops. Bolstering foreign security apparatuses is a core competency of US army special forces and has been embraced by Obama as a model for future counterterrorism operations in the hope of avoiding future large and open-ended conflicts.
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