{"id":188827,"date":"2019-05-25T05:28:35","date_gmt":"2019-05-25T05:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=188827"},"modified":"2019-05-28T07:32:38","modified_gmt":"2019-05-28T07:32:38","slug":"iraqi-mp-number-of-us-troops-in-iraq-exceeds-50000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=188827","title":{"rendered":"Iraqi MP: Number of US Troops in Iraq Exceeds 50,000"},"content":{"rendered":"

News Commentary — May 24, 2019<\/h1>\n
\"\"<\/a>

U.S. troops on Turkey’s border with Syria. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

If the U.S. decided to expand its military footprint in the Middle East then U.S. citizens, and ordinary citizens in Europe and allied powers, would be the last to know. That’s because the Western mainstream media now only publicises what the authorities approve of.<\/h5>\n
In effect the Western media has a form voluntary censorship in place. Those news outlets that won\u2019t abide with the dictates of what they can or cannot publicise soon find that official “leaks” on key news stories dry up. Depriving them of the insider comments, tip-offs and insights that go to make up the lifeblood of modern journalism.<\/h5>\n
Possibly as a result of this, readers will note that we\u2019ve heard very little recently about U.S. troop activity in Iraq and Syria. Despite the fact thousands of U.S. military personnel are in both countries there’s very little “news” about them. It’s not something the Pentagon wants the public to think about and so, obligingly, the media doesn’t report on it.<\/h5>\n
However, we know from reports some months ago that the U.S. has \u201cthousands of troops<\/span><\/a>” in both countries and what’s more, there numbers may be growing.<\/h5>\n
According to Iran\u2019s Fars News<\/a><\/span>, a senior Iraqi lawmaker has criticised the US for not completely withdrawing its troops from Iraq.<\/h5>\n
Instead, member of Iraqi Parliament’s Security and Defense Committee Karim al-Mohammadawi told the Arabic-language al-Ma’aloumeh news website that the number of American forces in the Arab country has considerably increased. So that there may now be nearly 50,000 US troops and defence personnel in Iraq.<\/h5>\n
This figure cannot be verified but according to the Iraqi lawmaker, the U.S. is currently engaged in establishing several new military bases in the Western section of al-Anbar province.<\/h5>\n
Apart from building new bases, Fars reports that the U.S. is also expanding existing facilities, including its Ain al-Assad military base in al-Anbar province. The expansion is taking place concurrent with the arrival of more U.S. military equipment and personnel.<\/h5>\n
Earlier this year, Qassim Muslih, the commander of popular forces in al-Anbar province warned of U.S. plans to expand its military footprint in Iraq, and the Middle East at large.<\/h5>\n
While these reports have received little coverage outside of the Middle East, the corporate Western media reports that the Pentagon is considering plans to send “10,000 extra<\/span><\/a>” U.S. military personnel to the region. Trump has just officially approved plans to send an additional 1,500 troops<\/a><\/span> to the region and that number could easily grow.<\/h5>\n
Just don\u2019t expect the corporate media to tell you if it does.<\/h5>\n
Ostensibly they will be sent to counter a supposedly growing military threat from Iran, so they could well be housed in the new and expanding U.S. military bases in Iraq.<\/h5>\n
Patrick Shanahan, the acting US defence secretary, confirmed the Pentagon was contemplating sending additional US troops to the Middle East.<\/h5>\n
“What we’re looking at is\u201d Shanahan said, \u201cthings that we can do to enhance force protection in the Middle East? It may involve sending additional troops.”<\/h5>\n
If the decision to send additional troops to the region were approved, they would join the 10,000 US troops the Iraqi media claims<\/span><\/a> are currently deployed in Al-Anbar province. Of course, there is no way we can confirm that there are 10,000 U.S. troops there but this is what the local media is reporting, and the U.S. media is curiously silent about.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is the U.S. stealthily expanding its military presence across the Middle East?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Behind_The_News"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=188827"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188854,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188827\/revisions\/188854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=188827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=188827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=188827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}