Thursday, June 18, 2015
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
The U.S. will fall way short of meeting its goal of training 24,000 Iraqi forces to fight Islamic State militants by this fall, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Wednesday on Capitol Hill where lawmakers already are skeptical of the Obama administration’s strategy to address threats in the Mideast.
Carter told the House Armed Services Committee that the U.S. has received only enough recruits to train about 7,000 – in addition to about 2,000 counterterrorism service personnel.
“Our training efforts in Iraq have thus far been slowed by a lack of trainees. We simply haven’t received enough recruits,” Carter said at a nearly three-hour hearing.
Carter said the train-and-equip mission in Syria also lacks enough trainees to fill existing training sites, primarily because it’s difficult to make sure the recruits are people who can be counted on and are not aligned with groups like IS.
“It turns out to be very hard to identify people who meet both of those criteria,” Carter said.
Later in the day, the House rejected a resolution to force Congress to debate an Authorization for the Use of Military Force for U.S. military engagement against IS in Iraq and Syria.
The measure, which was defeated 288-139, would have directed that U.S. troops be withdrawn from the fight within 30 days of passage – or by the end of the year if Obama determines an immediate withdrawal is not safe – if Congress failed to approve a new authorization.