Forget the definition of "is". Or the definition of "war". Obama seems to be unclear on the definition of "ground".
The White House’s decision to send an additional 250 special forces to Syria to aid in the fight against the Islamic State underscores his administration’s priority to dismantle the terrorist group,
“It represents what I’ve said from the start, which is that us dismantling ISIL is a priority, and although we are not going to send ground troops in to fight, we are going to try to find out what works and then double down,” Obama said in an interview with Charlie Rose set to air on CBS Monday evening and Tuesday morning.
Obama is not going to send in ground troops to fight ISIS. He's sending in troops to fight ISIS on the ground instead. And this doubletalk truly shows his commitment to fighting ISIS. By reinventing the meaning of the word "ground".
Asked whether those troops would be engaged in search-and-kill missions, Obama demurred.
“You know, I’m not going to go into details of all the mission sets that they’re involved with,” Obama said. “As a general rule, their role is not to engage directly with the enemy but rather to work with local forces that is consistent with our overall policy throughout.”
Here's one of those times that they didn't "engage directly".
Under the night sky, a fleet of Black Hawk helicopters and tilt-rotor aircraft carrying Army Delta Force commandos took off from Iraq and slipped across the border into eastern Syria, military and intelligence officials said. The goal: capture an Islamic State leader holed up in a multistory building in the town of Al Amr.
As the U.S. soldiers began their assault, they engaged in an intense firefight and some fought hand-to-hand with militants, the senior official said. The battle left about a dozen Islamic State militants dead, including the commandos’ target: a man known as Abu Sayyaf, a militant leader who helped spearhead the group's lucrative black market oil, gas and financial operations, the senior official said.
With the fighters dead, the soldiers grabbed Abu Sayyaf’s wife and a cache of the militants' laptops, cellphones and other materials before returning to a military base in Iraq, according to the Pentagon account.
So does anyone in the media call out Obama on lying yet again about obvious facts? Crickets.