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| President Barack Obama |
Barack Obama said Friday that his national security team will soon provide him with a list of 'selective actions by our military' to help push back a terrorist horde marching through Iraq, but insisted that 'we will not be sending U.S. troops back into combat' there.
He will be 'reviewing options in the days ahead,' the U.S. president said in a hastily scheduled statement on the South Lawn of the White House, before boarding Marine One en route to Bismarck, North Dakota.
The murderous Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), formerly known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq, 'poses a danger to Iraq and its people,' Obama said, 'and given the nature of these terrorists, it could pose a threat to America and its interests as well.'
But he emphasized that Iraq's government should 'solve their own problems.'
The United States, Obama insisted, will not get involved in a protracted military campaign in the absence of work toward a political solution in the nation that Saddam Hussein once ruled with an iron fist.
Former President George W. Bush, his predecessor who sent U.S. servicemen and women into Iraq by the tens of thousands, is determined to hold his tongue.
Susan Rice, Obama's national security adviser, is not traveling with him to North Dakota, Deputy Press Secretary Joshua Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Earnest said that military options under consideration 'do not include ... putting combat boots on the ground in Iraq.'
They also exclude, he added, a Bush-style open-ended military commitment on behalf of the United States.'
Instead, the White House is conditioning 'any commitment of military resources or a military operation' on an agreement from Iraqi leaders to commit 'to pursue an inclusive, political agenda' with Sunni Islamists who are terrorizing their cities.
Former President George W. Bush has been reluctant to weigh in on the latest developments in the region where he spent years deploying military assets that Obama would later pull back.
A request for comment from the former president was met with a non-response from his communications director Freddy Ford, who told MailOnline: 'I don’t have a comment for you. When he left office President Bush decided not to criticize his successor.'
Meanwhile, a senior Air Force official in Afghanistan told MailOnline on Friday that his forces, along with others in the Middle East, have been told to expect briefings on contingency plans in the next 72 hours.
Those contingency plans could include a wide range of military and nonmilitary options, he cautioned, but said he expects that anything the president might order would focus principally on air bases closer to the Persian Gulf.
The prospect of U.S. forces as far away as Kabul being put on alert, however, lends credence to an all-hands-on-deck airstrike scenario designed to cripple ISIS's forces.
Read the full story: www.dailymail.co.uk
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