The “Eager Lion” military exercise in Jordan was already used as a shoehorn to get US Patriot missile batteries and warplanes into the country, but with the drill finally coming to an end, the US dropped the revelation that 700 combat troops, supposedly sent there just for the two weeks, aren’t leaving either.
Instead, President Obama has announced that those 700 troops are just going to stay in Jordan, along with the about 300 that were already there, right along the Syrian border, until some unspecified future date when the “security situation will allow for their departure.” This means an open-ended deployment of 1,000 troops overall to the cusp of a warzone.
The whole “Eager Lion” drill centered around the notion of attacking Syria, and keeping the US combat troops who participated in that drill will only underscore that fact, and the prospect that they may march in at any moment.
That the whole drill pretext was centered around the Obama Administration’s announcement that they intend to directly arm Syria’s rebels and officials are constantly raising the prospect of direct intervention.
