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Title: 3,000 additional troops to deploy to Middle East as Pentagon prepares for Soleimani strike fallout
Source:
Stars and Stripes
URL Source: https://www.stripes.com/news/middle ... eimani-strike-fallout-1.613443
Published: Jan 3, 2020
Author: COREY DICKSTEIN
Post Date: 2020-01-06 15:58:34 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 2647
Comments: 10
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is sending thousands of additional troops to the Middle East to bolster security and its ability to respond quickly to expected violence throughout the region after a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad killed Iran’s most powerful general, defense officials said Friday. The new deployment will include roughly 3,000 82nd Airborne Division soldiers who were placed on prepare-to-deploy orders earlier this week amid growing tensions in Iraq between the United States and Iran, two officials said. At least several dozen special operations troops were also deployed to the region, one of the officials said. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deployments had not been announced publicly early Friday afternoon. The 82nd soldiers — members of the division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team — were expected to deploy to several locations throughout the Middle East, the officials said. An element of that brigade — some 750 soldiers from its 2nd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment — arrived in recent days in Kuwait after they were rapidly deployed there in response to an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday. Iran promised retaliation Friday after confirming the death of Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. drone strike as he arrived Thursday night at Baghdad International Airport. Soleimani was the leader of that nation’s elite Quds Force, Iran’s military organization that works hand-in-hand with its proxy forces throughout the region, including in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. The Pentagon had designated Soleimani a terrorist responsible for the deaths of about 500 U.S. troops in Iraq, who were killed by Iran-built explosively formed penetrators — armor-piercing roadside bombs that wreaked havoc on American forces during the height of the war in Iraq. Soleimani’s “reign of terror is over,” President Donald Trump said Friday afternoon in an address from Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach, Fla. resort. The president warned Iran that the United States has the world’s strongest military and would use it again if threatened. But he said his decision to strike Soleimani was not meant to start a new war in the Middle East. “We took action last night to stop a war,” Trump said, adding Soleimani should have been killed years earlier. “We did not take action to start a war.” U.S. Army Paratroopers assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, deploy from Pope Army Airfield, North Carolina, on Jan. 1, 2020. Elements of the Immediate Response Force mobilized for deployment to the U.S. Central Command area of operations in response to increased threat levels against U.S. personnel and facilities. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier Friday that Soleimani directed the rocket attack by the Iraqi-Shia militia Kataeb Hezbollah on Dec. 27 against a U.S.-Iraqi base in Kirkuk in northern Iraq that killed an American contractor and wounded four U.S. troops and two Iraqis. Soleimani was also to blame for the attack by Iran-controlled militiamen of the Popular Mobilization Forces on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, Pompeo said in an interview on CNN. The attempted siege on the embassy came as retaliation for a series of U.S. airstrikes Sunday against Kataeb Hezbollah locations in Iraq and Syria, which killed at least 25 militiamen and injured dozens more. The strike on Soleimani could elicit a much stronger response from Iran and its proxy forces, which looked to the powerful Iranian as a cult leader-like figure, experts on the region and members of Congress warned. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., said he worried the strike on the general increased the likelihood of war with Iran. “Killing Soleimani in this manner strengthens the hardliners in Iran and increases the likelihood that Iran’s proxies will be triggered into action," Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. "And if his killing results in America abandoning the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, it will be a coup for the Iranians." Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., cheered Trump's decision to strike Soleimani, calling him the second most powerful man in Iran. "He was the right fist of the Ayatollah and we took the Ayatollah’s arm off," Graham said in a statement. "This is not an act of revenge for what he’d done in the past. This was a preemptive, defensive strike planned to take out the organizer of attacks yet to come." Jon B. Alterman, the director of the Middle East program at the Center of Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, said Iranian retaliation was unlikely to turn into a full-blown ground war, but attacks on American positions through the region and cyberattacks were likely to come in the coming weeks and months.
CAPT. ROBYN J. HAAKE/U.S. ARMY
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 5.
#1. To: All (#0)
U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly promised to extract the United States from costly foreign conflicts, bring U.S. troops home, and shrug off burdensome overseas commitments. “Great nations do not fight endless wars,” Trump declared in his 2019 State of the Union address. “We’re bringing our troops back home,” he boasted during a cabinet meeting in October. “I got elected on bringing our soldiers back home.”
You realize that that may be what Trump is hoping for: total withdrawal in early at the Iraqis' insistence. Trump would find it hard to just pull out. But if he's forced out by the Iraqis, that is just as good for him. Either way, it forces the Iraqis to choose between Iran and America and not just continue playing both sides off.
so after investment of billions of dollars and thousands of lives, the US orchestrates a pull out by killing an Iranian leader, sounds like cowardice in the face of the enemy to me
And just which of our EUro-weenie NATO fake allies is your own national army? The French? The Belgians maybe? You won't even admit which of our miserable allies you are domiciled in.
I have made no secret of the fact that Australia is my home, I expect you weren't listening. Run off at the mouth if you like, but we have stood beside the US, but it is time to go home, bigger fish to fry
#7. To: paraclete (#5)
(Edited)
Your views aren't representative of Australia. The Aussies have been ready to fight in every war we've been in. Even Korea and Vietnam. Australia is America's scrappy little brother, always ready to mix it up. We could hardly ask for a more loyal ally. Even Britain is not so steadfast.
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#2. To: Deckard (#1)
“We’re bringing our troops back home,” he boasted during a cabinet meeting in October. “I got elected on bringing our soldiers back home.”
#3. To: Tooconservative (#2)
it forces the Iraqis to choose between Iran and America
#4. To: paraclete (#3)
#5. To: Tooconservative (#4)
You won't even admit which of our miserable allies you are domiciled in.
Replies to Comment # 5. I have made no secret of the fact that Australia is my home
End Trace Mode for Comment # 5.
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