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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMarines Tasked with Firing Howitzers in Syria are "Just Advisors" Says Sean Spicer
THE PENTAGON HAS deployed several hundred marines to Northern Syria, the Washington Post and CNN reported this week. Their mission: firing long-range artillery to help recapture Raqqa, ISISs self-proclaimed capital city.
The marines are equipped with M777 howitzers, which can fire GPS-guided explosives up to 25 miles.
Thats a big change from the train, advise and assist role U.S. forces have been playing so far although as with many previous troop deployments to Iraq and Syria, it was not debated, let alone authorized, by Congress.
But White House Press Secretary brushed off a question about the move, saying that sending several hundred advisers did not amount to hostile action.
https://theintercept.com/2017/03/10/marines-tasked-with-firing-howitzers-in-syria-are-just-advisers-says-sean-spicer/
The problem with the idiots in the White House is that they have no sense of history:
May 1961 - President Kennedy sends 400 American Green Beret 'Special Advisors' to South Vietnam to train South Vietnamese soldiers in methods of 'counter-insurgency' in the fight against Viet Cong guerrillas.
October 1961 - To get a first-hand look at the deteriorating military situation, top Kennedy aides, Maxwell Taylor and Walt Rostow, visit Vietnam. "If Vietnam goes, it will be exceedingly difficult to hold Southeast Asia," Taylor reports to the President and advises Kennedy to expand the number of U.S. military advisors and to send 8000 combat soldiers.
October 24, 1961 - On the sixth anniversary of the Republic of South Vietnam, President Kennedy sends a letter to President Diem and pledges "the United States is determined to help Vietnam preserve its independence..."
President Kennedy then sends additional military advisors along with American helicopter units to transport and direct South Vietnamese troops in battle, thus involving Americans in combat operations. Kennedy justifies the expanding U.S. military role as a means "...to prevent a Communist takeover of Vietnam which is in accordance with a policy our government has followed since 1954." The number of military advisors sent by Kennedy will eventually surpass 16,000.
http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1961.html
Eliot Rosewater
(32,538 posts)hand the country over to Russia.
pinboy3niner
(53,339 posts)Turbineguy
(38,518 posts)by pushing this button."
Initech
(102,539 posts)And based on the Yemen misfire, it is not going to take a military intel expert to figure out how it's going to end. And it's only going to create more terrorists.