A day after the
White House announced the deployment of 450 more U.S. troops to Iraq and
a new training hub in Anbar province, Army General Martin Dempsey said
the Pentagon was considering more sites in strategic areas such as the
corridor from Baghdad to Tikrit and further north toward Mosul.
Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged these
might require sending more U.S. troops, which already numbered about
3,100 in Iraq before Wednesday's announcement. His spokesman said
American forces could also be moved from within Iraq to avoid troop
increases.
"Our campaign is built upon establishing these 'lily
pads,' if you will, that allow us to continue to encourage the Iraqi
security forces forward," Dempsey told reporters before landing in
Naples, Italy.
U.S. President Barack Obama has said the troops
would not engage in combat in Iraq, where the Pentagon has relied
heavily on an air campaign that U.S. officials say has killed thousands
of Islamic State fighters and eroded their capability.
While the
3,100 U.S. forces in Iraq are a far cry from the peak of about 170,000
under President George W. Bush, the newly announced operations mark the
first significant adjustment in Obama's Iraqi strategy in months and
follow gains by Islamic State insurgents who control a third each of
Iraq and Syria.
Asked about Dempsey's comments, White House deputy
national security adviser Ben Rhodes told MSNBC, "if (Obama) gets a
recommendation to have another facility like this, he'll take a hard
look at it."
White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters there were "no immediate or specific plans" to add new bases in Iraq.
Dempsey
also renewed the possibility of deploying U.S. spotters alongside Iraqi
forces to call in air strikes during a future offensive, but added,
"we're just not there yet."
The possible future training sites,
such as the hub at the Taqaddum military base about 15 miles (25 km)
from Ramadi, were "just part of prudent planning," he said.
"It's
very practical (planning), looking at geographic locations, road
networks, airfields, places where we can actually establish these hubs,"
Dempsey said.
Dempsey did not see another such site in Anbar
province soon. "But I could conceive of one potentially somewhere in the
corridor that runs from Baghdad to Tikrit to Kirkuk and over into
Mosul. So we're looking at that area," Dempsey said.
TAQADDUM WEEKS AWAY
Dempsey
said it would take several weeks to establish the new hub announced on
Wednesday at Taqaddum near Ramadi, which fell to Islamic State militants
last month.
Taqaddum will require new American defenses to detect and guard against incoming rockets and mortars.
One
benefit of Taqaddum, Dempsey said, is it would help draw in tribes that
felt unsafe traveling to the other U.S. outpost in Sunni-dominated
Anbar province, at the Ain al-Asad air base.
"Using Taqaddum gives
us access to more of the tribes that are willing to stand against
ISIL," Dempsey said, using an acronym for Islamic State.
Dempsey,
who has long warned about the limits of U.S. military power in Iraq,
said he expected Sunni tribes would represent a "holding force" to
control territory seized in Anbar and would protect the flanks of the
Iraqi security forces as they advance.
He expressed confidence
that the latest deployments to Taqaddum would help advance Iraq's
military campaign against Islamic State, but that the real test was
whether Iraq's government could mend a sectarian rift between Sunni and
Shi'ite Muslims.
"The game changers are going to have to come from the Iraqi government themselves," he said.
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