Obama open to additional troops to Syria: White House

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON

President Barack Obama is open to additional deployments of U.S. troops to Syria, the White House said Tuesday.

The acknowledgement comes just one day after the American president formally announced that the U.S. would send an additional contingent of 250 special operators to Syria to help in the fight against Daesh.

“If this additional commitment of additional troops yields positive results and the Department of Defense concludes that, again, additional results could be generated with an additional commitment,” spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters, “I think that's something that the president would consider.”

The Pentagon is hoping the additional 250 troops will make a “tangible difference" in the anti-Daesh campaign.

The recently announced cadre of special operations forces and medical and logistics personnel comes just weeks after Washington authorized 217 additional troops to neighboring Iraq.

Late last year, the U.S. deployed as many as 50 special forces to train and assist troops in northern Syria in the fight against Daesh.

While the bulk of U.S. forces have assisted Iraqi, Kurdish and Syrian rebel forces as they clash with Daesh, operators from the elite Joint Special Operations Command have reportedly carried out raids targeting the terrorist group’s leadership.

The U.S. troop deployments may be pivotal as local forces eye Daesh's de facto capitals of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, ahead of potential offensives against the cities.

Those campaigns may prove to be some of the most fraught for anti-Daesh forces. The group has held the cities since 2014, giving it ample time to establish battlefield positions for tense urban warfare.