W.H.: Forces Being Deployed to Syria ‘Do Not Have a Combat Mission’

“As it relates to their mission — this is an important thing for the American people to understand -- these forces do not have a combat mission. In 2003 President Bush ordered their large scale long term combat operation in Iraq. That is something that Barack Obama then a State Senator from Illinois, spoke out against, he disagreed with that decision. And he didn’t, at that point, believed that it would serve the interests of the country to try to impose a military solution on the problems inside of Iraq. And President Barack Obama has that same view. He does not believe at the that military operation was in our best interests, and he does not believe that that’s something that we should do again. So, that is why our special operations personnel inside of Syria have a very different mission. It is not — that mission is to build the capacity of local forces so that they can be even more effective than they’ve already been in taking the fight to ISIL on the ground inside of Syria.”