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The 700 U.S. troops formerly stationed in Syria and withdrawn by the president just prior to Turkey's invasion will go to western Iraq and conduct counter-ISIS operations from there, according to Defense Secretary Mark Esper.Despite Trump's promise to bring the troops home, they will simply be shifted several hundred miles west. While Esper is mum about their specific mission, the location will allow for continued support for allies fighting ISIS and counter-terrorism operations in Iraq.ABC News: His comments were the first to specifically lay out where American troops will go as they leave Syria and what the counter-IS fight...

Turkish forces who launched multiple artillery rounds near a U.S. Special Operations outpost in northeastern Syria on Friday have known for months that Americans were there, according to four current and former U.S. officials, raising questions whether Turkey is trying to push American troops farther from the border. The incident occurred on a hilltop base overlooking the town of Kobane as Turkey continues an operation launched Tuesday against Syrian Kurds, some of whom the United States has partnered with for years in its campaign against the Islamic State. The incursion has focused on an area 60 miles to the west...

In 1951, Yiddish theater star Molly Picon, together with Jacob Kalich, her husband and fellow entertainer, and Cardinal Francis Joseph Spellman, the Vicar General of the United States Armed Forces, headed to Korea with a USO Christmas troupe. But as soon as Picon and Kalich stepped off the plane, a U.S. Army Chaplain ran up and asked if they could join 400 “boys” for Hanukkah. “Of course after flying 48 hours, we didn’t say no,” Kalich recalled in their 1971 interview for the William E. Wiener Oral History Library, held at the New York Public Library. “We started to give...

The United States will send 1,000 more troops to Poland, which has agreed to pay the entire expense, in a move that boosts the nations’ defense ties, President Trump has said. “We’ll be moving soldiers there,” Trump said during his bilateral meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda at the 74th United Nations General Assembly in New York City on Monday. The two later inked the deal. American service members will “likely” come from other places in Europe where they’re already stationed, Trump said. Officials say other details will be discussed in the coming weeks. “Poland came to us, they asked...

“Mexico’s Soldiers recently pulled guns on our National Guard Soldiers, probably as a diversionary tactic for drug smugglers on the Border,” but he didn’t support the drug-smuggling claim.He tweeted: “Better not happen again! We are now sending ARMED SOLDIERS to the Border. Mexico is not doing nearly enough in apprehending & returning!” U.S. troops are already at the border to help reduce illegal crossings. […] Two U.S. soldiers in a remote area of Texas recently were confronted by Mexican soldiers who thought the Americans had crossed into Mexico. The Mexican troops reportedly removed a weapon from one of the American...

The Pentagon is planning to deploy hundreds more American military personnel to the southern border, in the wake of President Trump’s announcement of a national emergency along the country’s border with Mexico. Currently 5,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Texas, Arizona and California, backing immigration enforcement operations led by the Department of Homeland Security. With Mr. Trump’s declaration of a national emergency, that number is expected to surge to 6,000 by March 1, a senior Defense Department official said Friday. Those troops will provide air support to Customs and Border Patrol officers and Homeland Security agents carrying out border security...

1. US troops will leave eastern and northern Syria, but America is not deserting this part of the country, said the officials, without revealing the nature of its continuing presence.

Afghanistan’s military and security forces are losing personnel at an unsustainable rate and could not remain intact for long if U.S. forces were withdrawn, according to Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr, the incoming CENTCOM commander. In testimony before Congress, the Marine three-star also said that the U.S. military and Taliban are “in a stalemate” — which was the most optimistic portion of his description of the current security situation in America’s longest-running war. His assessment comes on the heels of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s statement earlier this month that nearly 29,000 military and security personnel have been killed...

Videos at link. Full title: BREAKING: Thousands of Armed U.S. Troops Will Be Deployed to the Border by Friday, Here's What They'll Be Doing Officials from the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense announced Monday 5200 additional active duty U.S. troops will be deployed to the southern border with Mexico by Friday. Eight-hundred soldiers are on their way to Texas now. “They are in fact deploying with weapons," U.S. Northern Command Air Force General Terrence O'Shaughnessy said during a press conference. "I think the President has made it clear that border security is national security." Troops are being...

The war of words between Washington and Ankara over the U.S. military’s partnership with Kurdish paramilitaries in Syria escalated Wednesday, when a senior aide to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suggested American troops could be targeted alongside their Kurdish allies in the country’s ongoing air war against the militias. Senior presidential aide Ilnur Cevik said U.S. forces who are teamed up with members of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, were in danger of being hit by Turkish fighters patrolling the volatile border region with Syria. If YPG units and their American military advisers “go too far, our forces...

The Defense Department might propose that the US send conventional ground combat forces into northern Syria for the first time to speed up the fight against ISIS, CNN has learned. "It's possible that you may see conventional forces hit the ground in Syria for some period of time," one defense official told CNN.

January 20th cannot come soon enough. Instead of stepping back and trying to ensure a smooth transition for Donald Trump, Barack Obama has decided to go hog wild and use every ounce of presidential power still available to him. He has been establishing a bunch of new national monuments, he just stabbed Israel in the back at the United Nations, and on Thursday he even took time to give Joe Biden a Presidential Medal of Freedom. But one of the things that has people the most concerned is his endless provoking of Russia. Every few days it seems like Obama...

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — American soldiers rolled into Poland on Thursday, fulfilling a dream some Poles have had since the fall of communism in 1989 to have U.S. troops on their soil as a deterrent against Russia. (Snip) U.S. and other Western nations have carried out exercises on NATO's eastern flank in past years, but the new deployment — which includes some 3,500 U.S. troops — marks the first-ever continuous deployment to the region by a NATO ally. (Snip) There are fears, however, that the enhanced security could eventually be undermined by the pro-Kremlin views of President-elect Donald Trump. Poland...

Iranian-supplied rockets killed as many as 15 U.S. troops per month in Iraq in the summer of 2011, and Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis had a plan to retaliate. The Obama administration denied his request. Six U.S. soldiers were killed in a single such attack in early June of 2011, with another three killed just weeks later. Mattis, then the commander of U.S. Central Command, had had enough and decided the U.S. must strike back before the Iranian rockets caused further bloodshed. In conjunction with then Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey, Mattis proposed a strike inside Iranian territory, according to...

Allied troops and ISIS are set to battle for a collapsing dam that would spew nearly 600 times the water of the River Thames onto Mosul if it breaches. Engineers from an Italian company have been tasked with fixing the Mosul Dam's foundations to stop more than 11 trillion litres of water (11.11billion cubic metres) from flooding Mosul. Experts are warning their work could be in vain, and should the catastrophe happen, it is estimated 1.5million people could be killed by the floods in an impact described as 'worse than a nuclear bomb'. Waves of up to 45ft would be...

Islamic State forces have fired crude chemical weapons at US troops in Iraq, the Pentagon has confirmed, a startling disclosure that US officials promptly downplayed as resulting in no deaths or injuries. The attack came from a powdered mustard agent delivered in a mortar or rocket shell and fired on US forces on Tuesday at the Qayyarah West air base near Mosul. The air base, recaptured from Isis in July, is a pivotal staging ground for a highly anticipated attack on Mosul, Isis’s capital in Iraq approximately 40 miles (65km) to the north. Related: The harrowing story of the woman...

More than 400 additional US troops have arrived in Iraq in recent days as the battle for Mosul is expected to begin soon, a US defense official said Thursday. Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman Colonel John Dorrian stated that there are 4,460 US troops in Iraq, compared to 4,000 a week ago, and that Iraqi security forces are preparing to reclaim Mosul. Dorrian did not specify what the US troops would be doing, but mentioned that they were setting up a logistics hub at the recaptured Qayyarah airbase to the south of Mosul, which will serve as a staging area for...

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...

On "this week" ABC Bill Kristol calls for sending 50,000 u.s. troops on the ground to fight ISIS in Syria.

Michelle Obama is bringing a little bit of Hollywood on her trip to Qatar next week. The first lady is being accompanied by late-night comic and talk-show host Conan O’Brien, who will entertain US troops during a visit to the al-Udeid airbase near the capital of Doha.