Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said he will send additional U.S. ground troops to Iraq if needed to defeat the Islamic State.
“We’ll do what it takes to defeat [the Islamic State],” Carter said, in Kuwait Monday to meet with his top generals and diplomats in the Middle East to strategize on ways to defeat the extremist group.
Carter took questions from troops stationed at Camp Arifjian, Kuwait, and was asked repeatedly about whether he would reconsider adding more forces in Iraq beyond the current authorized limit.
“I don’t have a good answer for you right now,” Carter said. “What I would say to you at this point is we’ll do what it takes to defeat [the Islamic State]. As I said, we will, but we’ll do what it takes to get success here.”
At the Pentagon on Monday, an official said the Pentagon does not anticipate requesting additional forces for Iraq as U.S. Central Command commander Gen. Lloyd Austin has indicated he has the force levels he thinks he needs to get the Iraqi training mission done.
Carter is in Kuwait Monday and Tuesday, on his sixth day on the job, to talk with his top Central Command, U.S. Special Forces Command officers and Middle East diplomats to strategize about defeating the Islamic State.
President Obama has authorized sending 3,000 troops to Iraq to serve as advisers and trainers for Iraqi forces. As of Feb. 12, there were 2,645 U.S. troops training Iraqis at al-Asad air base, in Erbil, and bases near Baghdad.
But the U.S. is now preparing a force of 25,000 Iraqis for a spring offensive against what is believed to be a force of 1,000 to 2,000 Islamic State fighters in Mosul, for which the training is just beginning. In a briefing with reporters last week that has been questioned by lawmakers for its seeming broadcast of U.S. plans in advance of the Mosul offensive, a senior Central Command official said if the Iraqi forces can’t be trained in time, the Mosul offensive would be delayed.
