NPR reporter and fortune teller Tom Bowman weighed in on Iraq and US troop safety on Friday's second hour of The Diane Rehm Show.
11:07:45
REHMTom Bowman, how much of a shift is President Obama's announcement of 450 advisors to Iraq?
11:07:59
BOWMANYou
know, it's really not much of a shift, Diane. It's adding some more
trainers. We were told, initially, there'd be roughly hundreds more
trainers. Actually, now we're learning most of those people will be
security personnel for the roughly 50 trainers going to Anbar Province
to this base called Taqqadum, which, interestingly, was an old Marine
base I visited years ago. They called it TQ. So they'll be going there
in the coming weeks and months training up the Sunni tribes, trying to
get them to take part in the fight against ISIS.
11:08:32
BOWMANYou
know, heretofore, there haven't been many Sunnis fighting. You know,
they see the Iraqi government as one that's mistreating them or at least
ignoring them. So it's trying to pull this country together in a
unified way, get the Sunnis onboard fighting ISIS, that is the
challenge.
11:08:50
REHMBut
isn't there a danger that those 450 are going to be perhaps in the
sightlines of, say, some ISIS fighters who may come along knowing
Americans are there?
11:09:07
BOWMANWell,
they'll be set in this base, again, called Taqqadum. It's a somewhat
remote base. There could be rocket fire into the base. I know there
have been some rocket fires into the other base where there are U.S.
troops in Anbar called Al Asad. But again, these are huge bases. There
is some rocket mortar fire, let's say, but at this point, no U.S.
troops have been hurt or killed here. So there's a remote possibility
that, you know, a rocket could come in and kill some Americans, but at
this point, no, they're not going to be leaving that base, as far as we
know, at this point.
Let's hope Bowman's predictions are correct. Otherwise, he'll be locked away in a fortune cookie factory, plying his 'talents' there.
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