URGENT: 13,000 American troops to deploy to Speicher Base in Tikrit, Iraq

September 25, 2014 by Abdelhak Mamoun

P1 URGENT: 13,000 American troops to deploy to Speicher Base in Tikrit, Iraq Tikrit (IraqiNews.com) On Thursday the Vice President of the Saladin Provincial Council, Jassim Mohammed Hassan al-Attiyah, revealed that there are dozens of American military advisers at Speicher Base and that 13,000 additional American soldiers and their military vehicles will arrive during the next few days to the base in the city of Tikrit, located 140 kilometers (87 miles) northwest of the capital, Baghdad.

Al-Attiyah said that “the American military command chose to station personnel in Speicher Base because it is the largest military bases in Iraq,” noting that “there are dozens of American military advisers at the base that coordinate and supervise military battles.”

Al-Attiyah added that “13,000 American soldiers will arrive with their vehicles during the next few days to Speicher Base in order to supervise and participate in the liberation of Saladin province.”

This development comes a day after Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi informed President Barack Obama about Iraq’s refusal to accept foreign military ground forces on its territory.

On September 15,2014, the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr threatened to target American troops if they returned to Iraq, calling for “Mujahideen” to withdraw from their areas in case of the interference of those forces “by land or by sea, directly or indirectly.”

Washington has already sent 1,600 troops to Iraq, most recently on September 10, when an additional 475 soldiers were deployed to the country. The US claims most of them serve as advisers to Iraqi and Kurdish forces or provide security for the US embassy and the international airport in the Iraqi capital.

Washington has also been conducting airstrikes against the positions of the ISIS fighters in Iraq.

The deployment comes as US President Barack Obama said earlier this month that he would not pursue another ground war in Iraq after US troops’ pullout from the country in 2011.

“As your commander in chief, I will not commit you and the rest of our armed forces to fighting another ground war in Iraq,” said Obama in a speech to troops at US Central Command headquarters in Florida on September 17.

Senior religious and political figures in Iraq, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, have in recent days called on the Baghdad government not to rely on foreign powers in the battle against the ISIS.

http://www.iraqinews.com/iraq-war/urgent-13000-american-troops-deploy-speicher-base/

That sounds like a LOT of "boots on the ground" to me.