Jacobs Blasts Obama for Calling Troops ‘Advisers’ when They Will See Combat

JACOBS: “Well, on one level of analysis I think it’s disingenuous to say that we're only sending advisors and therefore they won’t be in combat. I was an advisor in Vietnam and I was in combat all the time. If we’re going to be with the indigenous force and train them, then we are going to be subjected to combat. I think it’s silly to assume that are not.”
MELVIN: “So why do that then? Why do we call them advisors when we know that’s not all they’re going to be doing?”
JACOBS: “Well, they are and that’s public relations. I think that the administration is not entirely clear in its own mind what its strategic objective is. Think about it. We are going to send advisors to train indigenous troops to do what? Well, to defend themselves. Well, when is that going to be done? I don’t think anybody is prepared to answer that. And unless and until you can state what the objective is, then you can’t tell how long it is going to be before you get there. You have to be objectively oriented. It's one of the things people learn in the military from the very, very beginning. You start at the end and work backwards. Until you do that, we don’t know how many people we are going to need, we don’t know how long they're going to be there because we can’t articulate what the end state is. Until we can do that, we are not going to be sure what's going to happen."
MELVIN: “Colonel Jack Jacobs, thank you, sir."