Speaking at the House Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced with much fanfare that the U.S. would deploy a Special Operations task force to Iraq—a “specialized expeditionary targeting force” he called it—to carry out “unilateral” operations against ISIS’s leadership, in order to “pressure” and demoralize the terrorist group and “dent” its popularity.

 While the elite force is reportedly limited to 200 members, Military Times quotes an unnamed official who says the force could total more hundreds of troops, including assault teams, aviation units and other support units. The group would reportedly be based in Irbil, capital of Iraq’s autonomous northern Kurdish region.

Carter insisted that the deployment was taking place “at the invitation of the Iraqi government,” but in a statement reported by the International Business Times, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said his government “does not need foreign ground combat forces” in Iraq. It needs weapons, training, and support from international partners. The deployment of foreign troops is unacceptable, he said, “without its approval, full coordination, and with full respect for Iraqi sovereignty.”

Immediately, Secretary of State John Kerry had to intervene, saying from Brussels that Iraq had been “briefed” on the operation in advance, and stressed that Washington would of course work closely with Baghdad on what kind of forces will deploy, where they will go, and what type of missions they will conduct, Military Times reported. The U.S., he added, has “full and total respect” for al-Abadi’s leadership, and all future plans will go forward “in full consultation and with full consent of the Iraqi government.”  

“Has Barack Obama just lost his voice, or has he lost his mind?” is the headline of an article in examiner.com by Mark Whittington from Houston. He is pointing to an article by Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, a “disappointed liberal” who wrote a column in the Post Tuesday worrying that Obama has “lost his voice,” that “his eloquence has been replaced by petulance and he has lost the power to persuade,” and that “his problem is that he often has nothing to say.”

The Cohen article came a week after another top Obama supporter at the Post, Dana Milbank, on Nov. 24 described Obama as “President Oh-bummer.” When Obama and Hollande met after the Paris bombing, Milbank wrote, Hollande argued to crush ISIS, and to work with the Russians and the Sysrian government to do so, while Oh-bummer Obama was hemming and hawing about how beating ISIS would be long and hard, and that Assad had to go first.

Whittington’s article quoted from a similar piece in the Washington Times by Charles Hurt. Both pointed to Obama’s “halting and disconnected speech patterns during the Paris Climate Summit,” indicating he has lost not just his voice, but his mind.

Hurt’s article is titled: “Has the president lost his ability to discharge the powers and duties of office?” He notes that in Obama’s press conference in Paris, without the teleprompter, “it was impossible to count the number of times he seized up, able to deaden the silence with only a drawn out Uh-um-ahh,” calculating that it was more than 330 times.

Hurt concludes,

Neither reporter references Obama rusing to push the button, but only his lies and incoherence. But Tulsi Gabbard’s hitting Obama’s Defense Secretary in Congressional hearings Tuesday on Obama’s rush to nuclear war was also published widely yesterday in the US press.