Joint Chiefs chairman won't rule out more U.S. military involvement in Iraq

[morningfog]

The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, left the door open Thursday to stepped-up U.S. military involvement in Iraq if ISIS militants pose a threat to the United States.

In response to a question about what the U.S. end game is in Iraq, Dempsey began by saying the U.S. military's current role is much different from it was during the Iraq war.

"Assessing and advising and enabling are very different words than attacking, defeating and disrupting," he said during a briefing at the Pentagon in Washington. "We may get to that point if our national interests drive us there, if (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) becomes such a threat to the homeland that the President of the United States, with our advice, decides that we have to take direct action. I am just suggesting to you that we are not there yet."

Dempsey also disputed the use of the term "mission creep" in Iraq.

"That's the wrong phrase. The issue is mission match," he said.

"We will match the resources we apply with the authorities and responsibilities that go with them based on the mission we undertake, and that is to be determined."

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/03/world/meast/iraq-crisis/

Not mission creep, mind you. "Mission match," based on an as of yet undetermined mission.

[PoliticAverse]

1. Today's euphemism: "mission match". n/t

[morningfog]

2. The gall of him to say that. With a straight face.

[yeoman6987]

3. What did President Obama mean when he said, "No boots on the ground"?

I must not understand that at all.

[morningfog]

4. You have to do the fact o meter parse:

he said, "we won't put combat troops back into Iraq." Plenty of wiggle room there. Troops can be sent into Iraq (and they are, 875 so far) prepared for combat but not labeled as "combat troops." This gives him cover to send an indefinite number as long as they are designated as "advisers" and "protectors of US interests."

The other angle they could use is that no combat troops are going to go BACK into Iraq. Only combat troops who have previously not been in Iraq would qualify. Brigades that served only in Afghanistan? Good to go into Iraq, because, above all, the President is a man of his word!