The Marines have landed, the situation is well in hand…
Keeping his campaign promise, President Trump and his Secretary of Defense Gen. James “Chaos” Mattis have ordered Camp Pendleton, California-based Teufelshunde into the fray against ISIS.
The Washington Post is reporting that hundreds of Marines from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) have been redirected from the command proper, currently deployed in Dijibouti in the Horn of Africa, to Syria via Kuwait.
With the bulk of the Marines being artillerymen, the Fightin’ Leathernecks will be establishing a fire base within striking distance of the de facto ISIS capital city of Raqaa.
Armed with the über-powerful 155-millimeter GPS-guided Excalibur rounds from M777 howitzers, it’s being reported that the Marines will be within 20 miles of the embattled Syrian city.
While the warriors of the 11th MEU are publicly to be engaging the Islamic jihadists by way of artillery strikes only, it’s also been reported that the dreaded Marine infantrymen “will provide security.” With the aggressive nature of Marines renown, one can only imagine just how offensively enthusiastic their “security” patrols will be.
Perhaps also illustrating that the fire base and its mission are a Marine invitation-only affair, it was further cited that “resupplies will be handled by part of the expeditionary force’s combat logistics element.”
As reported;
Marines from an amphibious task force have left their ships in the Middle East and deployed to Syria, establishing an outpost from which they can fire artillery guns in support of the fight to take back the city of Raqqa from the Islamic State, defense officials said.
The deployment marks a new escalation in the U.S. war in Syria, and puts more conventional U.S. troops in the battle. Several hundred Special Operations troops have advised local forces there for months, but the Pentagon has mostly shied away from using conventional forces in Syria. The new mission comes as the Trump administration weighs a plan to take back Raqqa, the so-called capital of the Islamic State, that also includes more Special Operations troops and attack helicopters.
