Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman and Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford said in a Pentagon press briefing late last week that the U.S. may need to send more military-support troops to Iraq in the ongoing effort to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL).
Dunford said the Department of Defense (DoD) soon will send proposals to the White House to step up forces in the Middle East.
Most of the fighting in Mosul, one of the most active recent battle zones, is led by Iraqi forces, with support from U.S. and other coalition forces. Any additional personnel sent to Iraq likely would support Iraqi forces in Mosul, Dunford said.
Dunford said these grounds forces are akin to coalition air assaults.
“From my perspective, this is no different than aviation fires we’ve been delivering,” Dunford said. “This happens to be surface fires, or artillery, but certainly no different conceptually than the fire support we’ve been providing to the Iraqis all along.”
Dunford stressed the important of intelligence gathering, especially in the wake of attacks in Paris, San Bernardino, Turkey and Brussels.
“From a military-to-military perspective, we’ve significantly increased our information- (and) intelligence-sharing over the last few months, and we have specific locations where we bring together a number of our coalition partners to do just that,” Dunford said.
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