Obama Under Pressure to Send U.S. Target Spotters to Iraqi Front
by Terry Atlas
5:00 AM EDT
May 22, 2015
Islamic State’s seizure of Ramadi has revived a debate in the Obama administration about whether to send a limited number of U.S. military specialists to Iraqi battlefields to target airstrikes on the extremists.
The group’s advances in the capital of Anbar province have called attention to the limits of using U.S. airpower to support Iraqi government and Kurdish forces and local militias.
Conducting precision airstrikes that avoid civilian casualties is more difficult without spotters using laser designators and other tools to guide them, particularly in and around cities, said a State Department official who spoke under ground rules requiring anonymity.
A U.S. airstrike in November against a different extremist group in Syria killed two children and wounded two adults, the Defense Department reported Thursday.
President Barack Obama and some of his advisers have opposed sending U.S. forces back into combat zones in Iraq, arguing that they should remain confined to training operations away from the fighting.
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-22/obama-under-pressure-to-send-u-s-target-spotters-to-iraqi-front
