The top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee said Monday that he is worried that the Pentagon’s announcement that 560 more U.S. troops will deploy to Iraq is driven by politics, not the needs of the mission.
“The war against ISIS and Islamic extremists cannot be won by inches, and I am concerned that operational needs in Iraq and Syria are taking a back seat to troop levels the White House finds politically palatable,” Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said in a statement.
The additional troops will build up an air base in Iraq to act as a “logistical springboard” in the mission to retake Mosul from the Islamic State, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said during a visit to Baghdad.
“These additional U.S. forces will bring unique capabilities to the campaign and provide critical enabler support to Iraqi forces at a key moment in the fight,” Carter said, according to prepared remarks.
President Obama also announced last week that he was slowing down the exit of troops from Afghanistan. The 9,800 U.S. troops in the country will draw down at the end of this year to 8,400, more than the plan to shrink the American presence to just 5,500 by year’s end.
That means almost 3,500 more U.S. troops than originally planned will be serving in the Middle East into 2017, a change in policy that will cost money, Thornberry said.
“The United States will now be deploying thousands more troops than we have budgeted for in the president’s budget request. Those deployments can only be fully supported through a supplemental budget request. I look forward to reviewing the president’s request when he sends it to Congress, as I believe he now must,” Thornberry said.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, also said that the president’s budget request does not accommodate the new requirements.
“Those operations will not pay for themselves, and we cannot continue to ask our troops to do more around the world by raiding funds needed to modernize their equipment and support the training,” he said.
McCain also urged the president to request more defense funding in the war chest, which he has the authority to do since it is not capped under sequestration.
It’s unclear how much the additional troop presence will cost. Obama’s fiscal 2017 budget request called for $54 billion for operations overseas, which includes the planned U.S. presence in U.S. Central Command and a significant boost to operations in Europe.
