Ground Combat Operation News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Know, it was part of what the president says. you know, you never get advice from the pentagon that says remove troops, right? no military official says this is the right time. >> we need less. >> that's right. you never hear that from a military commander. give us less troops, sir. is there a kocogent case in you mind, to pull our troops from seer wra and afghanistan? >> our troop footprint is fairly small, and most of the thing they're doing there are counterterrorism operations or training the local forces. i think both of those are the appropriate missions. we don't have a large ground com...

Campaign. >> reporter: he consistently said he's not going to put boots on the ground, josh. you don't deny that. he's consistently said that. that would not be part of this strategy. >> well, again, kristen, the only quote you read to me is a quote from 2013 that is a direct question related to what we were prepared to do to ensure that our concerns about the assad regime and the need for regime change were implemented. the fact is the president said we are not going to implement a military strategy to take down bashar al assad. what we want to do is we want to build the capacity of local for...

A ground operation in syria. and see a ground combat operation in syria, i am trying to figure out how can we measure that point? what are soldiers in combat doing these trained advice. it looks and smells and sounds loc a combat mission and soldiers are doing. and the pentagon described it -- >> what i am trying to do is as specific as possible about the responsibilities that the special operation personnel has. this is not an attempt to diminish the risk that they will face or the bravery that they will need to summon to carry out the operations. this is a dangerous place on the globe. they ...

So -- a ground combat operation in syria. so i'm trying to figure out how can we measure that? what are soldiers in combat doing that these train, advise and assist soldiers aren't doing? it looks and smells and sounds like a combat mission. and soldiers are dying. the pentagon has described some of this -- >> let me say, what i'm trying to do is to be as specific as possible with you about the specific responsibilities that these special operations personnel have. this is not in any way an attempt to diminish the risk that they will face or the bravery that they will need to summon to carry o...

Difference in night and day, between the strategy that president obama was implementing, to counter isil, and the strategy of a large term long scale ground combat operation that the bush administration pursued in 2003. the president did go out of his way to make quite clear that our strategy is quite different. the strategy was -- that difference existed then and that difference exists today. and what the president did in the context of that speech and in the numerous other times that you all have asked him about it and when he's given other statements about it, the president has been quite c...