http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/02/pentagon-won-t-say-how-many-troops-are-fighting-isis.html

Pentagon Won’t Say How Many Troops Are Fighting ISIS

written by  Nancy A. Youssef  & Shane Harris

Officially, there are now 3,650 U.S. troops fighting ISIS in Iraq. The real number of Americans involved in the war is closer to 6,000.

In the war against the self-proclaimed Islamic State, there are two ways to count the number of U.S. boots on the ground. There’s the one that officials admit to. Then there’s the ground truth.

Officially, there are now 3,650 U.S. troops in Iraq, there primarily to help train the Iraqi national army.

But in reality, there are already about 4,450 U.S. troops in Iraq, plus another nearly 7,000 contractors supporting the American government’s operations. That includes almost 1,100 U.S. citizens working as military contractors, according to the latest Defense Department statistics.

In other words, the total number of forces that Pentagon and Obama administration officials frequently cite in public are wrong. They’re short thousands of contractors—and about 800 troops. These forces are often assigned to specialized units or tasked with supporting troops on the front line.

Those short-term “support troops” could include security personnel or others maintaining base services. The official tally is comprised almost entirely of troops serving on the front line alongside Iraqi forces.

“We create a variety of categories of troops,” the official explained.http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/02/pentagon-won-t-say-how-many-troops-are-fighting-isis.html