President Barack Obama meets with Gen. Raymond Odierno, Commanding General, United States Forces-Iraq, in the Oval Office, June 2, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
David France, The Cable/Foreign Policy: Odierno: 50,000 Troops Needed To Defeat the Islamic State
It will take around 50,000 troops to destroy the Islamic State, according to the Army’s recently retired chief, but they don’t necessarily all have to be American.
That’s the assessment retired Army Gen. Ray Odierno gave Wednesday at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy’s Washington Forum. He added that U.S. troops would have to direct these forces.
Odierno has said ground forces are needed to defeat the extremists, although this appears to be the first time he suggested 50,000 troops would be enough to do the job. In August 2015, in his final news conference as the Army’s chief of staff, he said: “If we find in the next several months we’re not making the progress that we have, we should probably absolutely consider embedding some soldiers and see if that will make a difference. It’s an option we should present to the president when the time is right.”
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WNU Editor: Not going to happen. There is no political will in Washington to deploy more soldiers, the Iraqi army is dysfunctional, the Gulf states are not going to support a Shiite-backed government that is aligned with Iran, and the Kurds are only going to fight for Kurdish territory.
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