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A U.S. service member was killed by an improvised explosive device in northern Syria on Thursday, the Pentagon announced in a statement. The service member was killed near Ayn Issa, a town roughly 35 miles northwest of the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed capital of Raqqa. The death marks the first time a U.S. service member has been killed in the country since a contingent of Special Operations forces were deployed there in October 2015 to go after the extremist group.

In significant news that has thus far either gone under or outright unreported by the media, U.S. military advisors have “boots on the ground” in Yemen, according to a recent report in the Washington Post by Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Missy Ryan: “The Pentagon has placed a small number of U.S. advisors on the ground in Yemen to support Arab forces battling al-Qaeda, military officials said on Friday, signaling a new American role in that country’s multi-sided civil war. Navy Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said U.S. personnel had been in the country for about two weeks, supporting Yemeni and...

Iran reportedly has sent military advisers into Iraq and dispatched the head of its infamous Quds Force to help Baghdad strategize in its fight against Sunni militants, as the United States takes similar steps despite concern about Tehran's involvement.... Fox News confirms that Iran is flying surveillance drones over Iraq, something the U.S. also is doing. The New York Times reported that Iran, in addition, is sending tons of military equipment to the fellow Shiite-led government in Iraq and is dispatching military advisers. According to the Times, about a dozen officers from Iran's Quds Force have been sent into the...

resident Obama has decided to add 217 more U.S. troops to fight in Iraq, raising the total number now serving in the country to just over 4,000. The AP reports: Of the additional troops, most would be Army special forces, who have been used throughout the anti-Islamic State campaign to advise and assist the Iraqis. The remainder would include some trainers, security forces for the advisers, and maintenance teams for the Apaches.The decisions reflect weeks of discussions with commanders and Iraqi leaders, and a decision by President Barack Obama to increase the authorized troop level in Iraq by 217 forces...

IRBIL, Iraq — A U.S. Marine was killed near the front line with the Islamic State in northern Iraq on Saturday, becoming the second combat casualty of the war against the militants, according to the U.S. military and Iraqi officials. The Marine died when Islamic State militants fired rockets into a small U.S. base in Makhmour, a front-line town controlled by Kurdish peshmerga forces on the outskirts of the region of Kurdistan, U.S. officials said. “Several” other Marines also were injured in the rocket attack, according to a Pentagon statement. An earlier statement had not specified which branch of the...

Russia can ramp up its military presence in Syria “in hours” if need be, Vladimir Putin has said in an apparent warning to anyone considering taking advantage of his decision to withdraw forces from the country. Mr. Putin made the comments as he addressed more than 700 servicemen who have completed tours of duty in the Kremlin on Thursday afternoon. […] The comments are bound to fuel suspicions about the true nature of the Russian withdrawal in Western capitals. Despite declaring the mission over, Mr. Putin has previously made clear that substantial garrisons will remain in Syria at the Hmeymim...

President Obama’s nominee to head U.S. Central Command recently penned a memo to Defense Secretary Ash Carter demanding that the Pentagon stop discussing the operations of elite American troops. Foreign Policy, which obtained an excerpt of the memo, reported that Gen. Joseph Votel, currently the chief of U.S. Special Operations Command, wrote the December 8 memo to express concern about the Obama administration’s exposure of special operations forces’ activities. “I am concerned with increased public exposure of SOF activities and operations, and I assess that it is time to get our forces back into the shadows,” Votel wrote to Carter....

Today, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced that 200 special operations troops are heading to Iraq. Approximately 200 special operations forces, including intelligence personnel, pilots to position them, mechanics to maintain their aircraft, a quick reaction force and other support personnel in addition to the main assault force are headed to Iraq in the next few weeks as part of the new “specialized expeditionary targeting force” according to a U.S. official. A separate senior U.S. official said that capturing senior ISIS leaders would be an important component of the new assault force’s mission to learn more about ISIS networks as...

Dozens of American special operations forces will arrive in Syria "very soon," as promised by President Barack Obama's administration, a senior official said Sunday.

EXCERPT "There will be an intensification of the strategy that we put forward but the strategy they we put forward is the strategy that ultimately is going to work," Obama told reporters at a news conference at the close of a Group of 20 summit.

They already have engaged them, of course, per the otherwise successful raid to liberate an ISIS prison in Iraq last week that ended with one American soldier being killed. That sounds suspiciously like combat, and if there’s one thing Barack Obama stands for, it’s that the era of combat in Iraq is over.How can combat not be combat? Easy. Just call it something else. It wouldn’t be the first Orwellian euphemism this White House has used to reassure progressives that they may be at war but they’re not at war-war. Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook had been blunter on...

Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Tuesday that the U.S. will begin "direct action on the ground" against ISIS forces in Iraq and Syria, aiming to intensify pressure on the militants as progress against them remains elusive. "We won't hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL, or conducting such missions directly whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground," Carter said in testimony before the Senate Armed Services committee, using an alternative name for the militant group. Carter pointed to last week's rescue operation with Kurdish forces in northern Iraq to free hostages...

But the sheik’s fortunes began to decline after the last U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq in 2011. Many of the Anbari fighters, known as the Sons of Iraq, were never paid by the Iraqi government, then led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. What’s more, Sheik Ahmad told me in 2012 that his contacts with the U.S. government stopped after the last troops pulled out. The sheik still publicly aligned himself with Maliki and the central government, even thought that government was failing to provide basic security in western Iraq. These failures by the Baghdad government created the conditions for the...

The White House is moving to arm Iraq’s tribal and religious militias. But these forces hate the Baghdad government almost as much as they hate ISIS. President Obama’s decision to send an additional 450 troops to Iraq is the latest example of a strategy mired in double paradox. The U.S. wants to save a unified Iraq—by strengthening the ethnic and religious militias that could tear the country apart. And to pull it off, Washington is counting on the cooperation of groups divided by a chasm of suspicion. In its announcement Wednesday, the Obama administration said the additional American troops are...

The United States is considering establishing additional military bases in Iraq to combat the Islamic State, the top American general said on Thursday, a move that would require at least hundreds more American military trainers to help Iraqi forces retake cities lost to the militant Sunni extremist group. President Obama’s decision this week to send 450 trainers to establish a new military base to help Iraqi forces retake the city of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, could signal the beginning of similar efforts in other parts of the country, said Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint...

The Obama administration is planning to send as many as 400 additional trainers to Iraq to train Iraqi forces against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, according to the New York Times . The decision comes after an embarrassing defeat of Iraqi forces at Ramadi last month to the terrorist group, prompting the administration to reconsider its training and equipping program for Iraqi forces. Sunni tribal fighters in Ramadi had complained of not receiving any training or equipment from the central government. After the defeat, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said he had asked a team of top military...

One of the best lessons I learned in my years of service in the military is a quote often share with y’all: “the enemy has a vote.” You can try and sell the American people — and others — a politicized line such as “al-Qaida has been decimated and destroyed” or “we have reached the framework of a deal with Iran” or “ISIS is not Islamic,” but the bad guys are not affected by empty rhetoric. And here we go again with the Obama administration and the conflagration against Islamic terrorism. We’ve been told that ISIS has stalled. Their recruiting...

On December 14, 2011 Barack Obama delivered a speech to soldiers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on how the Iraq War was over: “It’s harder to end a war than to begin one… We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self reliant Iraq.“ And with that Barack Obama pulled all US troops from Iraq despite the advice from top military leaders. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKSb2ukQxvYFast forward three years… Today Barack Obama sent 1,000 US paratroopers from Fort Bragg back to Iraq as part of the Operation Inherent Resolve mission. The place is a mess.

During Barack Obama's recent State of the Union speech, he told America he had no more campaigns to run. But it seems that statement flies in the face of reports that an organization known as “One Voice” has brought in what has been called a "five-man Obama team" to defeat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Included in that five-man team is Jeremy Bird, the national field director for Obama's 2012 campaign, Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director of the Independent Media Review and Analysis, said Monday, citing a report at Haaretz. That group, Dr. Lerner added, will run the anti-Netanyahu effort out...

The 82nd Airborne, and more specifically its 3rd Brigade Combat Team, are no strangers to Iraq. Since 2003, parts of the brigade have deployed in support of U.S. efforts there on at least three occasions. Now, more than three years after the U.S. military presence in Iraq was thought over, about a quarter of the Panther Brigade will return with a new mission to help train Iraqi forces to fight the Islamic State. About 1,000 paratroopers from the brigade will deploy this week as part of the Operation Inherent Resolve mission.