President Obama finished up his briefings at CENTCOM at MacDill this morning here in Tampa, as the House of Representatives was poised to vote on a proposal to give Obama the authority to train and equip Syrian rebels to battle ISIL.
But if you're following this story at all in the news, you realize that there must be a ground troop component, and there doesn't appear to be much faith at all in our new "partners" in Iraq and Syria. Yesterday, Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey essentially said it could be U.S. troops who don those "boots on the ground," saying, "where I believe our advisers should accompany Iraqi troops on attacks against specific [Islamic State] targets, I’ll recommend that to the president.”
But according to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, Obama can send ground troops to the region without explicitly saying or doing so, by sending CIA advisors.
Title 50 of the U.S. Code regulates the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. An often-cited passage is Section 413(b), which deals with presidential approval and reporting of “covert actions.” In essence, this statute gives the president authority, with a proper “finding,” to send U.S. Special Operations forces on paramilitary operations, under the command of the CIA. The best-known example was the 2011 raid on Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed Osama bin Laden.
Something to be aware of as this debate goes forward, right?
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