U.S. troops are in combat in Iraq, despite administration statements that American forces will act only in an advising role, a military spokesman said Wednesday.
“Of course this is a combat zone. There’s a war going on in Iraq in case people haven’t noticed,” said Col. Steve Warren, a spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve. “We’re here and it’s all around us. This is a dangerous place.”
“There are thousands of Americans in harm’s way right now,” he said.
Army Master Sgt. Joshua Wheeler was killed last week while participating in a raid to free 70 Iraqi civilian hostages about to be executed by the Islamic State. Wheeler was the first U.S. combat death in the fight against the Islamic State and the first in Iraq since the U.S. withdrew in 2011 at the end of the Iraq war.
During the raid with Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers, U.S. forces were meant to stay in helicopters, but Wheeler ran toward the sound of gunfire when he saw Peshmerga fighters were taking fire, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Friday.
Asked about Warren’s blunt statement, Carter said Wednesday that there’s no question Wheeler’s death was a result of U.S. troops being in combat.
“Of course he died in combat,” Carter said. “There are American troops in combat every day.”
Trying to clear up the increasingly blurry line on whether U.S. troops are in combat despite administration assertions to the opposite, Carter said that U.S. forces are participating in combat operations, but the mission against the Islamic State is not a combat mission.
Instead, the overall mission of the U.S. in Iraq is to enable “capable and motivated local forces rather than to substitute for them.”
Carter told lawmakers this week that raids like last week’s will happen more often when the U.S. finds opportunities to deliver the Islamic State a blow.
Warren also said Americans have been leaving the wire, or going off base, for months, going back to putting U.S. boots on Sinjar Mountain last year when the Islamic State first rose to power.
“This is not a radical departure from what happens, we have sent people outside the wire before when the situation has warranted it,” he said.
