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U.S. To Deploy Special Forces In Syria

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

President Obama has reconsidered his vows not to put U.S. boots on the ground in Syria. The White House confirms that fewer than 50 U.S. Special Operations forces are being deployed to Syria to try to help local fighters battle the Islamic State. Of course, this comes as Russia unleashes a big air campaign of its own in Syria. In a moment, we'll speak with Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who says that Congress ought to vote on what he calls an unauthorized war in Syria. But first, NPR's David Welna begins our coverage.

DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: It was not President Obama who announced that U.S. ground troops are moving into Syria, nor was it Defense Secretary Ash Carter. The news broke in a very low-profile way from unidentified Pentagon and White House officials speaking only on background. The task of explaining and defending this new development publicly fell to White House spokesman Josh Earnest. He called the troop deployment an important force multiplier for local combatants who've already received help in other ways from the U.S. to fight ISIS.

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JOSH EARNEST: The president wants to intensify that assistance that we're providing. And one way you can intensify that assistance is to pair them up with experts, with some of the smartest, bravest, most effective fighters in the United States military and that's exactly what we're doing. And I do expect that that will improve their performance on the battlefield.

WELNA: The challenge for Earnest was to square this decision with what the president said a year ago when he announced the air campaign against ISIS in Iraq would expand to Syria.

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BARACK OBAMA: It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil.

WELNA: Earnest insisted these American commandos being sent to Syria, in his words, do not have a combat mission.

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EARNEST: It still means that they're in a dangerous situation. It still means that they will have all of the equipment that they need to protect themselves if necessary.

STEPHEN BIDDLE: The administration I doubt is thrilled with having to do this.

WELNA: That's a George Washington University military expert Stephen Biddle, who's also been a Pentagon adviser. Biddle sees the deployment of ground forces to Syria mainly as mission creep by an administration that's taken a lot of heat for how it's handled Syria.

BIDDLE: I think they feel they have to do something or another to show that they're not just sitting on their hands while the Russians escalate. They don't like more forceful options, but they don't think that doing nothing is viable.

WELNA: Last week, it became clear that U.S. forces already have battled ISIS on the ground.

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WELNA: That's the sound of a firefight in Iraq in which U.S. Special Operations forces accompanied Kurdish fighters in a raid on an Islamic State jail. One U.S. soldier died in the battle. Defense Secretary Carter demurred when asked last week just how that soldier died.

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ASH CARTER: This is combat, things are complicated.

WELNA: Earlier this week, Carter told Congress the U.S. would be stepping up the fight against the Islamic State.

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CARTER: And from the skies above, we expect to intensify our air campaign, including with additional U.S. and coalition aircraft to target ISIL with a higher and heavier rate of strikes.

WELNA: And yet over the past week, the U.S. carried out just two airstrikes in Syria while Russian jet fighters carried out dozens. Military analyst Biddle says the U.S. has reasons to try to stay out of the way.

BIDDLE: There's tremendous danger of creating for ourselves a much bigger problem than the Islamic State poses if we accidentally end up in a dogfight with Russian fighters over Syria.

WELNA: Another reason why airstrikes have been so limited in Syria, U.S. military officials say, is that there's been limited intelligence about what's going on on the ground. Here's how Joint Chiefs Chairman General Joe Dunford put it when he testified before Congress this week.

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JOE DUNFORD: Without a partner on the ground, Syria has clearly presented the most difficult challenge. No one is satisfied with our progress to date.

WELNA: And it's far from clear whether deploying fewer than 50 U.S. Special Operations forces to Syria will be a game changer in a war that's already taken a quarter million lives. David Welna, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

David Welna is NPR's national security correspondent.