Obama vowed there would be no boots on the ground.
"I will not put American boots on the ground in Syria," he told the American people in a nationally televised address. Like every other word out of his mouth, that was a lie.
So that was modified to the claim that US soldiers were just there as advisers and not in a combat role. That was also a lie. And it's a lie that dishonors the soldiers fighting and taking fire on the ground. The soldiers who aren't supposed to exist.
Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis said on May 31 that the two soldiers “were not on the front lines, they were not engaged in active combat, but they were hit in both cases by indirect fire" -- a term that typically refers to rocket or artillery fire.
Davis added that the soldiers were carrying out advise-and-assist duties.
So we get more of the "advise-and-assist' nonsense claims. Since officially there is no combat mission, everyone is there to advise or assist or protect. They're not there to fight.
What really happened? Who knows. Standard policy is to tell a lie and then to repeat it. The Pentagon is a little better than the White House, but these days not by much.