12/9/2023 0 Comments Army intelligence support activity![]() “He just wanted to advise the policy.”īut the pressure for a more robust U.S. The Defense Department, Nagata would argue, “can’t continue to be on the sidelines.” Beyond these broad points, however, Nagata “was always very careful to make sure it didn’t look like he was trying to write the policy,” the former officer said. “He always saw this as an industrial-size problem and that picking away at it with little, disparate programs across the government wasn’t really going to solve it,” the former special ops officer said. But within tight government circles, Nagata has been arguing for a much more vigorous military response to the rise of the Islamic State, according to the former special operations officer who participated in some of the discussions, and a special operations officer assigned to the Pentagon. air power has been bombing Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria. military presence on the ground, the CIA has been running a small program to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels, while U.S. “We knew there was little appetite for a huge presence, but we said we knew from our extensive experience with the Iraqis and really the region that if there weren’t advisors left on the ground, there was little chance of long-term success,” he said, adding that Nagata’s was one of a chorus of military voices making this point. forces out of Iraq by the end of 2011, a policy that ignored “the best advice that DoD was providing the administration,” a former special operations officer who participated in some of the discussions said, adding that the military had provided the administration with options short of complete withdrawal. That frustration began with the administration’s decision to pull all U.S. The Obama administration waited more than two years to take even these limited steps against the Islamic State, a delay that many senior military officers found frustrating. Meanwhile, 5th Special Forces Group is ramping up efforts in the Middle East aimed at training more than 5,000 Syrian rebels a year in Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and, perhaps, Jordan. Instead, Obama has sent about 3,000 troops to Iraq in an effort to retrain the beleaguered Iraqi military and raise a new force of tribal fighters. President Barack Obama has flatly rejected. From Jordan, he oversees the Defense Department’s effort to train and equip the moderate Syrian rebels whom Washington sees as its best chance of gradually beating back the Islamic State without the use of American ground combat forces, an option U.S. military should play in the fight against the Islamic State. Today, Nagata is a key player in the administration’s tortured debate about how significant a role the U.S. “Fast-forward 18 months to where we are today,” the special operations officer said, “and Nagata was spot on.” But the passage of time has proved the two-star general with owlish features correct. This was in 2013, before the Islamic State had made its huge territorial gains in Syria and Iraq, and prior to Shiite Houthi rebels sweeping across Yemen, forcing the U.S.-allied government from power. “Mike Nagata basically stood up and told them that Syria and Yemen and Iraq were coming apart at the seams,” said another special operations officer in the room, whose account was confirmed by a former senior intelligence official who also attended the meeting. The occasion was a conference at McRaven’s headquarters where Nagata was to brief the senior commanders on the Middle East and what his forces might need there. Special Operations Command, which shares MacDill with Centcom. One of the four-star officers to whom he was speaking was his direct boss, Gen. Nagata was - and is - the boss of the special operations component of U.S. Mike Nagata told them their worlds were about to come undone. ![]() ![]() military officers involved in counterterrorism operations in the Middle East sat with several other flag officers in a room at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, and listened as Maj. ![]() About 18 months ago, the two most senior U.S. ![]()
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