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Nearly half of the roughly 300 US military advisers and special operations forces expected to go to Iraq are now in Baghdad and have begun to assess Iraqi forces in the fight against Sunni militants, the Defense Department has said as the US increased aid to the besieged country.
On Capitol Hill, senators who left a closed briefing with senior Obama administration officials expressed hope Iraq could soon form a new government, perhaps in the next week, facilitating greater US military action against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
At the Pentagon, Navy Rear Admiral John Kirby yesterday told reporters the troops in Baghdad included two teams of special forces and about 90 advisers, intelligence analysts, commandos and support personnel needed to set up a joint operations center in the Iraqi capital. Another four teams of special forces would arrive in the next few days, Kirby said.
Those troops, added to the approximately 360 other US forces in and around the embassy in Baghdad to perform security, would bring the total US military presence in Iraq to about 560.
Kirby also said the US was conducting up to 35 surveillance missions over Iraq daily to provide intelligence on the situation on the ground as Iraqi troops battle the aggressive and fast-moving insurgency.
President Barack Obama last week announced he would send as many as 300 advisers into Iraq to assess and advise Iraqi security forces. Part of that plan involved setting up two joint operating centers one in Baghdad and the other in northern Iraq, where a lot of the fighting has taken place.
The teams, largely made up of Army Green Berets, will evaluate the readiness of the Iraqi troops and their senior headquarters commanders in an effort to determine how best the US can strengthen the security force and where other additional advisers might be needed.
Kirby said the initial assessments from the teams could be completed in the next two weeks to three weeks, but he said there was no timeline for how long the troops would be in Iraq.
"I don't have a fixed date for you as a deadline or an end date, but it's very clear this will be a limited, short-term mission," he said.
He said the insurgency was well organized and aided by foreign fighters and Sunni sympathizers in the country. The briefing for all senators yesterday was led by Anne Patterson, the top US diplomat for the Mideast, and included military and intelligence officials.
