Post by Admin on Nov 28, 2015 12:52:17 GMT
American Killed in Raid to Rescue Prisoners in Iraq
First American combat death in four years raised questions about pledge to keep troops out of harm’s way
By GORDON LUBOLD in Washington and MATT BRADLEY in Baghdad for The Wall Street Journal
Updated Oct. 22, 2015 2:33 p.m.
www.wsj.com/articles/american-killed-in-raid-to-rescue-kurdish-fighters-in-iraq-1445523452
An American service member was killed Thursday during a rare joint mission by U.S. special forces and Kurdish fighters to free prisoners of Islamic State in Iraq, the first American combat death in the country in four years, officials said.
The Americans were meant to play a supporting role in the early-morning raid by piloting as many as five helicopters that ferried Kurdish Peshmerga forces to the site of the raid, U.S. officials said. But when the Kurdish fighters got pinned down by heavy Islamic State fire, the U.S. forces jumped in to provide covering fire, resulting in the American’s death.
The operation raised thorny questions about President Barack Obama’s pledge to maintain an advise-and-assist mission in Iraq while keeping the more than 3,500 American troops deployed there out of harm’s way. American officials said the special forces did what they were supposed to do by aiding their partners. They said the operation doesn’t necessarily reflect deepening involvement in Iraq.
But the American’s death—while on foot and firing his weapon directly at the enemy—illustrates just how quickly standard procedures can be discarded amid the pressures of battle.
“In the chaos of combat, when you see your friends being hit, I would submit to you that you’re under somewhat of a moral obligation,” said Col. Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.
“These are men of action. They don’t stand around. They take action and that’s what they did. And they frankly saved the day.”
A U.S. defense official said commanders asked for and got a special authority from Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Wednesday to allow them to participate in a direct action operation. Mr. Obama was notified of the operation but didn’t sign off on it, White House officials said.
As many as 30 Americans took part in the operation, which aimed to free 17 Kurdish fighters known as Peshmerga at a prison facility held by Islamic State near the town of Hawija, U.S. officials said.
When they reached the prison, they found many more prisoners than they had expected. But they didn't find the Peshmerga fighters they originally intended to rescue, raising questions of the quality of the intelligence that led the force there in the first place.
Of the 70 people rescued, American officials said 20 were members of Iraqi security forces including Sunni Arabs, as well as a number of other unidentified civilians.
The U.S. backed the Kurdish force by providing assistance including helicopters, intelligence, advice, and logistics. The American commandos used at least five helicopters in the raid, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
The prison, almost 150 miles north of Baghdad, was located in the former home of an Iraqi judge that had been seized by Islamic State, said Najmaldin Karim, the governor of Kirkuk province where the town of Hawija is located. The building also served as headquarters for the extremist group, he said.
As the operation unfolded, a firefight ensued between the Kurdish forces and Islamic State fighters guarding the facility, Col. Warren said. When it became clear to the U.S. force that the rescue mission might have to be aborted, the Americans inserted themselves into the battle.
The U.S. conducted airstrikes before and after the operation to isolate the compound where the prisoners were held. The bombing campaign destroyed nearby bridges, checkpoints and roads to prevent reinforcements from attacking the commandos.
“I think this was a good target,” said Mr. Karim. “They knew they could do it, so they went ahead and executed it.”
U.S. officials justified the operation, saying intelligence suggested the prisoners were in imminent danger.
“There were indications they were all going to be killed very soon,” said one U.S. official.
While the American and Peshmerga fighters who planned the mission weren’t aware that the killings were likely, they were tipped by intelligence from American drones that showed fresh mass graves dug around the prison compound, American officials said.
Pentagon officials said important intelligence was recovered from the site, but they didn't provide any further details.
The raid comes at a particularly delicate moment for U.S. involvement in Iraq as Russia wades further into the multi-front war straddling Iraq and Syria and challenges American dominance in the region.
The operation sparked anger from Shiite militia leaders in Iraq, some of whom have already pledged to attack U.S. soldiers if they return to the country in a combat capacity.
Haji Adel, a leading officer in hard-line Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Saraya Salam militia, said the Americans had only launched the raid to recover their declining stature and influence in the face of growing Russian influence in the region.
“America did the operation today just to keep its dignity before the international community,” said Mr. Adel.
“The Americans are in a really embarrassing situation…because of the Russian intervention and the level of help offered by Russia to Iraq.”
Mr. Adel also said the raid reflects a regular complaint of Iraq’s Shiite politicians: that the U.S. values its relationship with Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region over those with Shiite and Sunni Arab communities.
“The U.S. has common interests with Kurdistan more than interests with Baghdad so for sure the U.S. favored Kurdistan over Baghdad in this operation,” he said.
Despite political pressure from Turkey that American support for Kurdish forces could embolden the Kurdish push for autonomy, many U.S. military officials recognize the effectiveness of the Kurdish forces. Mr. Carter, the defense chief, is said to be particularly amenable to assisting the Kurds.
The Peshmerga approached the U.S. about assisting them in the rescue mission some weeks ago, U.S. defense officials said. But despite growing trust between American forces and the Peshmerga, the U.S. resisted accompanying the Kurdish force on the rescue mission.
It was only when Peshmerga commanders told the Americans that they would conduct the operation on their own, putting them potentially in grave danger, that the U.S. agreed to assist them, two U.S. officials said.
Chris Harmer, a military analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, said the operation showed the Peshmerga forces are getting more comfortable conducting operations and, despite the complexities, this amounted to a morale boost for Iraqi security forces.
Mr. Harmer said the operation demonstrated a willingness on the part of the U.S. military to conduct more offensive operations as necessary, he said.
“It opens the door to further U.S. offensive operations against Islamic State,” he said. “All along we’ve been trying to go light on our footprint.”
The mission raised broader questions about what American troops were doing in danger. Pentagon and White House officials were hard pressed to explain why this mission resulted in the death of an American service member when U.S. forces are ostensibly in Iraq only to train and advise and not have “boots on the ground.”
Such a mission suggests to critics of American military policy in Iraq that Mr. Obama’s train-and-advise mission is now expanding into what amounts to “mission creep.”
At the White House, spokesman Eric Schultz acknowledged that Mr. Obama has pledged to avoid sending U.S. combat troops into action in Iraq.
“We have also delineated several types of operations that would be permitted under the president’s directive,” he said, listing training, counterterrorism and rescue operations that entail the use of American special operations forces. “So this is all authorized.”
Col. Warren described a combat situation in which the U.S. advisers quickly exceeded their initial responsibility of piloting helicopters carrying the Kurdish troops.
According to protocols governing the advise and assist mission, the Americans were to “stay behind the last covered and concealed position,” Col. Warren said. But shortly after the Peshmerga fighters left the helicopters and began advancing toward the walled compound, they began taking “withering fire” and casualties, he said.
“This was their operation, a Kurd operation,” Col. Warren said. The U.S. troops “were there as advisers. But it was an emergency in combat, so the guys made a decision.”
—Ghassan Adnan, Felicia Schwartz and Carol E. Lee contributed to this article.
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U.S. Soldier Dies in Raid to Free Prisoners of ISIS in Iraq
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ERIC SCHMITT
OCT. 22, 2015 - The New York Times
www.nytimes.com/2015/10/23/world/middleeast/us-commandos-iraq-isis.html?_r=0
BAGHDAD — An American soldier was killed in action in Iraq for the first time since the renewed military intervention here last year, during a Kurdish and United States commando raid to free prisoners being held by Islamic State militants on Thursday, the Pentagon said.
The raid, near the northern town of Hawija, freed about 70 prisoners but not the group the soldiers had expected to find, American and Iraqi officials said. American officials said that five Islamic State fighters had been detained and that important intelligence about the terrorist group had been recovered.
The raid was the first time American soldiers had been confirmed to be directly accompanying local forces in Iraq onto the battlefield against the Islamic State since President Obama sent troops back to the country last year. Until now, the American contingent, which numbers around 3,500, had been limited to training and advising the Iraqi and Kurdish forces on military bases and training areas. But senior American military officials have long signaled that they might ask the White House for permission to send small teams into the field with Iraqi forces for some important operations, such as the battle for Mosul.
The Pentagon press secretary, Peter Cook, said the United States was trying to help a loyal ally — the Kurdish Regional Government — and was also rushing to save lives.
“This was a unique circumstance in which very close partners of the United States made a specific request for our assistance,” he said. “So I would not suggest that this is something that’s going to now happen on a regular basis.”
It was not, Mr. Cook insisted, a forerunner of a more aggressive posture in which American troops would regularly join the Iraqis on combat operations.
The decision to use American helicopters to fly Kurdish commandos to Hawija, and to have American Special Operations forces join them in a supporting role, was taken by Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter. The White House, Mr. Cook said, was informed in advance.
Providing new details about the operation, American officials said on Thursday night that it had been mounted at the request of the Kurdish officials who insisted they had solid intelligence that the Islamic State was about to massacre prisoners, including a number of Peshmerga fighters, as the Kurdish forces are known.
“They were going with or without us,” said a senior Defense Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a classified operation. “We wanted to stand behind an important ally.”
Fears that the prisoners were in danger may have been reinforced by the militants’ actions in recent days. An Iraqi in the Hawija area, who asked not to be named because he feared retribution from the Islamic State, said this week that the militants had recently executed 11 young men who were the sons or relatives of police officers or other Iraqi forces. He said their bodies had been displayed on a nearby bridge.
Five American helicopters were involved in the raid, a mix of Chinook and Black Hawk choppers. The American forces included commandos from the Delta Force counterterrorism unit, officials said.
As the operation began, the United States conducted an airstrike to destroy a bridge near Hawija and hamper the Islamic State’s ability to send reinforcements. But the operation soon became an intense firefight.
Kurdish forces were to take the lead in the operation while American soldiers, who were to play a supporting role, initially were near a wall that was some distance from the objective, officials said.
But the Kurds were pinned down by fire from the militants. So the Americans began to maneuver to relieve the pressure on their Kurdish allies and one of them was fatally wounded, said Col. Steven H. Warren, a spokesman for the American-led coalition in Iraq.
When the prisoners were freed, the Kurds were surprised to see that no pesh merga fighters were among them. It is not clear whether the initial intelligence was bad or the Islamic State had moved the Kurds somewhere else.
Instead of the about 20 prisoners the commandos had anticipated, there were 69, the Kurds said. They included more than 20 Iraqi security forces, some local residents and apparently some militants whom the Islamic State suspected as being traitors, according to American officials.
Freed hostages have told Iraqi and American officials in Erbil, where they were taken, that they had been told they were to be executed at dawn on Thursday after the morning prayer. Trench graves had already been dug.
As the American helicopters flew away, an American F-15 jet bombed the house that the Islamic State has used as its prison. Iraqis from the area said the building that the militants took over was owned by a local judge who had left the region.
“They cut off roads and raided the place successfully,” Najmaldin Karim, the governor of the surrounding Kirkuk Province, said in a telephone interview. “They were able to take people with them.”
Kurdish security officials said Thursday night in a statement that more than 20 militants had been killed in the firefight and that six militants, not the five reported by the United States, had been captured. The Kurdish statement said that three Kurdish commandos had been injured.
A news agency linked with the Islamic State asserted that three militants who were defending the prison had been killed, and it said that Islamic State fighters had killed some of their prisoners.
The operation comes as Iraq and the American-led coalition have been trying to regain the initiative, stepping up the pressure against the militants in Ramadi, Baiji and other areas in Iraq, as well as in Syria.
Hawija is under the control of the Islamic State and has been an important flash point. Kurdish forces advanced toward the area in recent weeks and were said to have taken significant casualties, according to American officials.
The raid may intensify the public debate in the United States over the Americans’ military role in the region. The Obama administration has said that its goal is to degrade and ultimately defeat the Islamic State, but the campaign against the militants has progressed slowly.
Some experts say there is no such thing as a risk-free conflict and that American teams will need to venture outside their bases to advise Iraqi forces if they are to evict the Islamic State from Iraq. Critics, however, are likely to portray the raid as a case of mission creep.
The Pentagon has not yet named the soldier who was killed, a standard procedure until relatives are notified. Military personnel from other coalition nations have also been killed in the campaign against the Islamic State since its advance through Iraq last year. A Canadian soldier was killed in northern Iraq in March in a so-called friendly-fire incident involving Kurdish troops. And a Jordanian pilot was burned to death this year by the Islamic State after his plane crashed in Syria in December.
While American commando operations have taken place in Syria, none had previously been confirmed to have happened in Iraq.
~Michael R. Gordon reported from Baghdad, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Falih Hassan contributed reporting from Baghdad.
First American combat death in four years raised questions about pledge to keep troops out of harm’s way
By GORDON LUBOLD in Washington and MATT BRADLEY in Baghdad for The Wall Street Journal
Updated Oct. 22, 2015 2:33 p.m.
www.wsj.com/articles/american-killed-in-raid-to-rescue-kurdish-fighters-in-iraq-1445523452
An American service member was killed Thursday during a rare joint mission by U.S. special forces and Kurdish fighters to free prisoners of Islamic State in Iraq, the first American combat death in the country in four years, officials said.
The Americans were meant to play a supporting role in the early-morning raid by piloting as many as five helicopters that ferried Kurdish Peshmerga forces to the site of the raid, U.S. officials said. But when the Kurdish fighters got pinned down by heavy Islamic State fire, the U.S. forces jumped in to provide covering fire, resulting in the American’s death.
The operation raised thorny questions about President Barack Obama’s pledge to maintain an advise-and-assist mission in Iraq while keeping the more than 3,500 American troops deployed there out of harm’s way. American officials said the special forces did what they were supposed to do by aiding their partners. They said the operation doesn’t necessarily reflect deepening involvement in Iraq.
But the American’s death—while on foot and firing his weapon directly at the enemy—illustrates just how quickly standard procedures can be discarded amid the pressures of battle.
“In the chaos of combat, when you see your friends being hit, I would submit to you that you’re under somewhat of a moral obligation,” said Col. Steve Warren, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.
“These are men of action. They don’t stand around. They take action and that’s what they did. And they frankly saved the day.”
A U.S. defense official said commanders asked for and got a special authority from Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Wednesday to allow them to participate in a direct action operation. Mr. Obama was notified of the operation but didn’t sign off on it, White House officials said.
As many as 30 Americans took part in the operation, which aimed to free 17 Kurdish fighters known as Peshmerga at a prison facility held by Islamic State near the town of Hawija, U.S. officials said.
When they reached the prison, they found many more prisoners than they had expected. But they didn't find the Peshmerga fighters they originally intended to rescue, raising questions of the quality of the intelligence that led the force there in the first place.
Of the 70 people rescued, American officials said 20 were members of Iraqi security forces including Sunni Arabs, as well as a number of other unidentified civilians.
The U.S. backed the Kurdish force by providing assistance including helicopters, intelligence, advice, and logistics. The American commandos used at least five helicopters in the raid, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.
The prison, almost 150 miles north of Baghdad, was located in the former home of an Iraqi judge that had been seized by Islamic State, said Najmaldin Karim, the governor of Kirkuk province where the town of Hawija is located. The building also served as headquarters for the extremist group, he said.
As the operation unfolded, a firefight ensued between the Kurdish forces and Islamic State fighters guarding the facility, Col. Warren said. When it became clear to the U.S. force that the rescue mission might have to be aborted, the Americans inserted themselves into the battle.
The U.S. conducted airstrikes before and after the operation to isolate the compound where the prisoners were held. The bombing campaign destroyed nearby bridges, checkpoints and roads to prevent reinforcements from attacking the commandos.
“I think this was a good target,” said Mr. Karim. “They knew they could do it, so they went ahead and executed it.”
U.S. officials justified the operation, saying intelligence suggested the prisoners were in imminent danger.
“There were indications they were all going to be killed very soon,” said one U.S. official.
While the American and Peshmerga fighters who planned the mission weren’t aware that the killings were likely, they were tipped by intelligence from American drones that showed fresh mass graves dug around the prison compound, American officials said.
Pentagon officials said important intelligence was recovered from the site, but they didn't provide any further details.
The raid comes at a particularly delicate moment for U.S. involvement in Iraq as Russia wades further into the multi-front war straddling Iraq and Syria and challenges American dominance in the region.
The operation sparked anger from Shiite militia leaders in Iraq, some of whom have already pledged to attack U.S. soldiers if they return to the country in a combat capacity.
Haji Adel, a leading officer in hard-line Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Saraya Salam militia, said the Americans had only launched the raid to recover their declining stature and influence in the face of growing Russian influence in the region.
“America did the operation today just to keep its dignity before the international community,” said Mr. Adel.
“The Americans are in a really embarrassing situation…because of the Russian intervention and the level of help offered by Russia to Iraq.”
Mr. Adel also said the raid reflects a regular complaint of Iraq’s Shiite politicians: that the U.S. values its relationship with Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region over those with Shiite and Sunni Arab communities.
“The U.S. has common interests with Kurdistan more than interests with Baghdad so for sure the U.S. favored Kurdistan over Baghdad in this operation,” he said.
Despite political pressure from Turkey that American support for Kurdish forces could embolden the Kurdish push for autonomy, many U.S. military officials recognize the effectiveness of the Kurdish forces. Mr. Carter, the defense chief, is said to be particularly amenable to assisting the Kurds.
The Peshmerga approached the U.S. about assisting them in the rescue mission some weeks ago, U.S. defense officials said. But despite growing trust between American forces and the Peshmerga, the U.S. resisted accompanying the Kurdish force on the rescue mission.
It was only when Peshmerga commanders told the Americans that they would conduct the operation on their own, putting them potentially in grave danger, that the U.S. agreed to assist them, two U.S. officials said.
Chris Harmer, a military analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, said the operation showed the Peshmerga forces are getting more comfortable conducting operations and, despite the complexities, this amounted to a morale boost for Iraqi security forces.
Mr. Harmer said the operation demonstrated a willingness on the part of the U.S. military to conduct more offensive operations as necessary, he said.
“It opens the door to further U.S. offensive operations against Islamic State,” he said. “All along we’ve been trying to go light on our footprint.”
The mission raised broader questions about what American troops were doing in danger. Pentagon and White House officials were hard pressed to explain why this mission resulted in the death of an American service member when U.S. forces are ostensibly in Iraq only to train and advise and not have “boots on the ground.”
Such a mission suggests to critics of American military policy in Iraq that Mr. Obama’s train-and-advise mission is now expanding into what amounts to “mission creep.”
At the White House, spokesman Eric Schultz acknowledged that Mr. Obama has pledged to avoid sending U.S. combat troops into action in Iraq.
“We have also delineated several types of operations that would be permitted under the president’s directive,” he said, listing training, counterterrorism and rescue operations that entail the use of American special operations forces. “So this is all authorized.”
Col. Warren described a combat situation in which the U.S. advisers quickly exceeded their initial responsibility of piloting helicopters carrying the Kurdish troops.
According to protocols governing the advise and assist mission, the Americans were to “stay behind the last covered and concealed position,” Col. Warren said. But shortly after the Peshmerga fighters left the helicopters and began advancing toward the walled compound, they began taking “withering fire” and casualties, he said.
“This was their operation, a Kurd operation,” Col. Warren said. The U.S. troops “were there as advisers. But it was an emergency in combat, so the guys made a decision.”
—Ghassan Adnan, Felicia Schwartz and Carol E. Lee contributed to this article.
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U.S. Soldier Dies in Raid to Free Prisoners of ISIS in Iraq
By MICHAEL R. GORDON and ERIC SCHMITT
OCT. 22, 2015 - The New York Times
www.nytimes.com/2015/10/23/world/middleeast/us-commandos-iraq-isis.html?_r=0
BAGHDAD — An American soldier was killed in action in Iraq for the first time since the renewed military intervention here last year, during a Kurdish and United States commando raid to free prisoners being held by Islamic State militants on Thursday, the Pentagon said.
The raid, near the northern town of Hawija, freed about 70 prisoners but not the group the soldiers had expected to find, American and Iraqi officials said. American officials said that five Islamic State fighters had been detained and that important intelligence about the terrorist group had been recovered.
The raid was the first time American soldiers had been confirmed to be directly accompanying local forces in Iraq onto the battlefield against the Islamic State since President Obama sent troops back to the country last year. Until now, the American contingent, which numbers around 3,500, had been limited to training and advising the Iraqi and Kurdish forces on military bases and training areas. But senior American military officials have long signaled that they might ask the White House for permission to send small teams into the field with Iraqi forces for some important operations, such as the battle for Mosul.
The Pentagon press secretary, Peter Cook, said the United States was trying to help a loyal ally — the Kurdish Regional Government — and was also rushing to save lives.
“This was a unique circumstance in which very close partners of the United States made a specific request for our assistance,” he said. “So I would not suggest that this is something that’s going to now happen on a regular basis.”
It was not, Mr. Cook insisted, a forerunner of a more aggressive posture in which American troops would regularly join the Iraqis on combat operations.
The decision to use American helicopters to fly Kurdish commandos to Hawija, and to have American Special Operations forces join them in a supporting role, was taken by Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter. The White House, Mr. Cook said, was informed in advance.
Providing new details about the operation, American officials said on Thursday night that it had been mounted at the request of the Kurdish officials who insisted they had solid intelligence that the Islamic State was about to massacre prisoners, including a number of Peshmerga fighters, as the Kurdish forces are known.
“They were going with or without us,” said a senior Defense Department official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a classified operation. “We wanted to stand behind an important ally.”
Fears that the prisoners were in danger may have been reinforced by the militants’ actions in recent days. An Iraqi in the Hawija area, who asked not to be named because he feared retribution from the Islamic State, said this week that the militants had recently executed 11 young men who were the sons or relatives of police officers or other Iraqi forces. He said their bodies had been displayed on a nearby bridge.
Five American helicopters were involved in the raid, a mix of Chinook and Black Hawk choppers. The American forces included commandos from the Delta Force counterterrorism unit, officials said.
As the operation began, the United States conducted an airstrike to destroy a bridge near Hawija and hamper the Islamic State’s ability to send reinforcements. But the operation soon became an intense firefight.
Kurdish forces were to take the lead in the operation while American soldiers, who were to play a supporting role, initially were near a wall that was some distance from the objective, officials said.
But the Kurds were pinned down by fire from the militants. So the Americans began to maneuver to relieve the pressure on their Kurdish allies and one of them was fatally wounded, said Col. Steven H. Warren, a spokesman for the American-led coalition in Iraq.
When the prisoners were freed, the Kurds were surprised to see that no pesh merga fighters were among them. It is not clear whether the initial intelligence was bad or the Islamic State had moved the Kurds somewhere else.
Instead of the about 20 prisoners the commandos had anticipated, there were 69, the Kurds said. They included more than 20 Iraqi security forces, some local residents and apparently some militants whom the Islamic State suspected as being traitors, according to American officials.
Freed hostages have told Iraqi and American officials in Erbil, where they were taken, that they had been told they were to be executed at dawn on Thursday after the morning prayer. Trench graves had already been dug.
As the American helicopters flew away, an American F-15 jet bombed the house that the Islamic State has used as its prison. Iraqis from the area said the building that the militants took over was owned by a local judge who had left the region.
“They cut off roads and raided the place successfully,” Najmaldin Karim, the governor of the surrounding Kirkuk Province, said in a telephone interview. “They were able to take people with them.”
Kurdish security officials said Thursday night in a statement that more than 20 militants had been killed in the firefight and that six militants, not the five reported by the United States, had been captured. The Kurdish statement said that three Kurdish commandos had been injured.
A news agency linked with the Islamic State asserted that three militants who were defending the prison had been killed, and it said that Islamic State fighters had killed some of their prisoners.
The operation comes as Iraq and the American-led coalition have been trying to regain the initiative, stepping up the pressure against the militants in Ramadi, Baiji and other areas in Iraq, as well as in Syria.
Hawija is under the control of the Islamic State and has been an important flash point. Kurdish forces advanced toward the area in recent weeks and were said to have taken significant casualties, according to American officials.
The raid may intensify the public debate in the United States over the Americans’ military role in the region. The Obama administration has said that its goal is to degrade and ultimately defeat the Islamic State, but the campaign against the militants has progressed slowly.
Some experts say there is no such thing as a risk-free conflict and that American teams will need to venture outside their bases to advise Iraqi forces if they are to evict the Islamic State from Iraq. Critics, however, are likely to portray the raid as a case of mission creep.
The Pentagon has not yet named the soldier who was killed, a standard procedure until relatives are notified. Military personnel from other coalition nations have also been killed in the campaign against the Islamic State since its advance through Iraq last year. A Canadian soldier was killed in northern Iraq in March in a so-called friendly-fire incident involving Kurdish troops. And a Jordanian pilot was burned to death this year by the Islamic State after his plane crashed in Syria in December.
While American commando operations have taken place in Syria, none had previously been confirmed to have happened in Iraq.
~Michael R. Gordon reported from Baghdad, and Eric Schmitt from Washington. Falih Hassan contributed reporting from Baghdad.