U.S. Special Forces troops were on the ground Thursday with thousands of Kurdish and Yazidi fighters to guide airstrikes in a push to take the northwestern Iraqi flashpoint town of Sinjar and cut off a vital ISIS resupply route between Syria and Iraq, U.S. and Kurdish officials said.
The American troops had helped guide at least 36 airstrikes in the initial phases of the offensive but they were technically not functioning as Joint Terminal Attack Controllers, or JTACs, a role which has been barred by the Obama administration to date, U.S. officials said.
Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook was at pains to describe how the Special Ops troops were coordinating with the Kurds on the airstrikes while not serving as JTACs.
"You should not see this as some unique operation" which required the approval of Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, though he was fully informed of the offensive, Cook said at a Pentagon news briefing.
"They're providing assistance in determining where airstrikes are carried out but they're not acting directly as JTACs," he said of the U.S. troops.
Cook said he would not go into operational details but his remarks suggested that the Kurds were picking out targets and relaying that information to the U.S.
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