{"id":13109,"date":"2015-12-02T00:45:26","date_gmt":"2015-12-02T08:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.46.6.243\/?p=13109"},"modified":"2015-12-02T00:45:26","modified_gmt":"2015-12-02T08:45:26","slug":"dunford-isil-wants-u-s-to-be-impetuous-in-iraq-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/?p=13109","title":{"rendered":"Dunford: ISIL Wants U.S. to Be Impetuous in Iraq, Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Washington, DC&#8230;The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant wants the United States to be \u201cimpetuous right now, as opposed to being aggressive,\u201d the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the House Armed Services Committee today.  ISIL \u201cwould love nothing more than a large presence of U.S. forces on the ground in Iraq and Syria, so that they could have a call to jihad,\u201d Marine Corps Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. told lawmakers during testimony with Defense Secretary Ash Carter.<\/p>\n<p><iframe width='640' height='360' scrolling='no' frameborder='0' style='border: none; overflow: hidden; width: 500px; height: 300px;' allowtransparency='true' src='http:\/\/www.dvidshub.net\/video\/embed\/439991'><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Dunford said the current anti-ISIL strategy is showing progress. The United States, he said, needs to stick with airstrikes against targets in Iraq and Syria and with developing forces on the ground to take and retain territory from the terror group, while coalition and local forces will increase pressure against ISIL across the region.<\/p>\n<p>The chairman also discussed a \u201cspecialized expeditionary targeting force\u201d that will deploy to the region to assist Iraqi and Kurdish peshmerga forces against ISIL. These American special operators will conduct raids, free hostages, gather intelligence and capture or kill ISIL leaders.<\/p>\n<p>Carter said the force will also be used to conduct unilateral operations in Syria.<\/p>\n<p>Dunford highlighted the force\u2019s capacity for intelligence gathering.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur effectiveness is \u2026 obviously, inextricably linked to the quality of intelligence we have,\u201d he said. \u201cOur assessment is that this force and the operations this force will conduct will provide us additional intelligence that will make our operations much more effective.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The force operations, themselves, will be intelligence driven, the general said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe enemy doesn&#8217;t respect boundaries; neither do we,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are fighting a campaign across Iraq and Syria. So we\u2019re going to go where the enemy is and we\u2019re going to conduct operations where they most effectually degrade the capabilities of the enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>There are currently 3,500 U.S. service members in Iraq now. If more forces are needed, the chairman said he wouldn\u2019t \u201cfeel at all inhibited about making recommendations that would cause us to grow greater than 3,500.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The way ahead in Iraq was one of the questions the chairman fielded. Iraqi security forces have been retrained and reconstituted, the chairman said.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Iraqi and Kurdish forces have driven ISIL out of Beiji. And, Kurdish forces have won a significant victory against ISIL in Sinjar.<\/p>\n<p>Once Ramadi falls, \u201cyou are starting to close the noose,\u201d Dunford said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve cut the lines of communication at Sinjar between Mosul and Raqqa,\u201d he said. \u201cSo Mosul is a future operation. Probably I wouldn\u2019t affix a date to it but probably sometime months from now as opposed to weeks from now we would start to see operations in Mosul.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Washington, DC&#8230;The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant wants the United States to be \u201cimpetuous right now, as opposed to being aggressive,\u201d the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the House Armed Services Committee today. ISIL \u201cwould love nothing more than a large presence of U.S. forces on the ground in Iraq [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13110,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-government","category-news","last_archivepost"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/151201-D-DT527-130.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.thepinetree.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}