More US Troops Headed to Syria to Fight ISIS; Further North Korean Provocation
TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. When is a ground troop not a ground troop? The president on Saturday afternoon gave a pretty hard-and-fast no when asked about whether he would dispatch American troops to Syria.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It would be a mistake for the United States or Great Britain or a combination of Western states to send in ground troops and overthrow the Assad regime.</s>TAPPER: Apparently, we were only supposed to pay attention to the very last part of that sentence, the one about overthrowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime. Watch President Obama this morning announcing hundreds more American troops heading to Syria to fight ISIS.</s>OBAMA: I have approved the deployment of up to 250 additional U.S. personnel in Syria, including special forces, to keep up this momentum.</s>TAPPER: Barbara Starr is live for us at the Pentagon. Barbara, U.S. troops on the ground engaged in combat, but they're not combat troops and they're not boots on the ground?</s>BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's what the Pentagon perhaps would like people to think, but the reality, of course, is this. There are a growing number of very combat-capable U.S. troops on the ground in both Syria and Iraq.</s>STARR (voice-over): To get to ISIS fighters like these seen in a recent propaganda video, President Obama is sending 250 additional U.S. troops into Syria, most, special operations forces. The president says the U.S. troops will not have a combat mission.</s>OBAMA: They're not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces that continue to drive ISIL back.</s>STARR: The additional 250 troops will join 50 already there, and it will be dangerous. Military medical personnel are also deploying.</s>BEN RHODES, U.S. DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Any special forces troops that we deploy into Iraq or Syria are going to be combat- equipped troops. They may be in circumstances where they find themselves in harm's way because these are dangerous places.</s>STARR: But the president has accepted the Pentagon's recommendation that it's worth the risk.</s>OBAMA: Their expertise has been critical, as local forces have driven ISIL out of key areas.</s>STARR: The goal now, Raqqa, ISIS' self-declared capital, the center of its so-called caliphate. The special operations forces will try to bring more Sunni Arab fighters into the mix who would be willing to help fight to get Raqqa back. The U.S. will train Arabs and Kurds to spot targets for coalition airstrikes. It will also accompany them onto the battlefield to offer real-time advice, but not go all the way to the front lines. And they will be able to gather critical intelligence, something James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, welcomes.</s>JAMES CLAPPER, NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE DIRECTOR: At any time you get ears and eyes on the ground, that's a good thing.</s>STARR: And in Iraq, another 200 U.S. troops, military advisers are also going in. They are going to help get the Iraqi troops ready to retake the city of Mosul there. Also, look for U.S. Apache gunship helicopters and Army long-range ground-based Howitzers to get involved in that fight -- Jake.</s>TAPPER: All right, Barbara Starr at the Pentagon, thank you so much. Continuing with our world lead today, they are considered by many to be the most critical weapon of retaliation in the absolute worst-case scenario of nuclear war, missiles launched from submarines, which is why North Korea's latest move might be the most alarming, especially to U.S. officials and especially to those who protect us on U.S. bases throughout the Pacific. Over the weekend, the hermit kingdom launched another missile, but this time it was a ballistic missile from a sub, which requires much more technical sophistication and advancement. I want to bring in CNN chief national correspondent Jim Sciutto. How serious is this latest test by North Korea?</s>JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: This has been a military priority for North Korea for some time. It's been marked by a series of failures. But as one U.S. official told me this weekend, with this test, it's gone from a joke to something very serious. Why a joke? Let's look at these photos here. In a previous attempt last year, it was a failure, and the way that U.S. officials knew that it was a failure is because they had to doctor the photos. They discovered that the photos were doctored. How did they know that? Because the flame plume coming out of the back of that sub-launched missile did not match its reflection in the water, so such a failure that they in effect had to create a fake photograph showing success there. Subsequent tests, one of them nearly sunk a North Korean submarine, but this one, in the words of another U.S. defense official, was essentially successful, at least, in the view of U.S. intelligence, a step forward.</s>TAPPER: And explain, why is a missile launch from a sub more concerning than these other tests from North Korea that we have seen in recent weeks and months?</s>SCIUTTO: They are all concerning. This is more concerning for a couple of reasons. One, by its nature, a sub-launched missile extends the range of the missile, so it could be short- or medium-range, but if you could float that submarine up to the U.S. coast or a port, it's clearly a much bigger threat. But the other thing is that it's much more difficult to track. You can throw up all the missile defense you want to around North Korea from South Korea, and there's already Patriot missile systems there. They're talking about the so-called THAAD system, which is another high-altitude defense system, deploying that to South Korea in some time. You could box that in. But if you can get a sub out from under that umbrella, in effect, it takes away the effect of those missile defenses.</s>TAPPER: What is the U.S. most concerned about with this test? Is it that a North Korean submarine will approach American shores or is it that it's just more that we don't know about in terms of their capabilities?</s>SCIUTTO: I think it's a combination. And it doesn't even have to get to the American shores, because that sub could travel a lot shorter distance and still get in range, for instance, of Japan, South Korea, as well as U.S. bases in Asia. There are a lot of potential targets there that worry U.S. officials.</s>TAPPER: Very concerning. Jim Sciutto, thank you so much. Marked for death? CNN speaks to a man who says he is on the U.S. kill list and he survived four drone strikes. Plus, investigators trying to close in on Prince's cause of death, including a closer look at events that happened just days before.