Well, I guess that answers the big “will they or won’t they” question of the week. The Obama administration announced late on Monday that they will deploy 275 military troops into Iraq, mere hours after Obama proclaimed on Friday that “we will not be sending U.S. troops back into combat in Iraq.” Team Obama will of course argue that these will be special forces soldiers rather than “combat troops,” lest any critic believe there’s an inconsistency there. But make no mistake about it: the report given to Congress makes it abundantly clear that these troops WILL be equipped for combat, and they’ll remain there until the security situation improves. Any claim to the contrary by the White House is purely a semantic argument, and given the absolute collapse we’re seeing in the region, we should be prepared to see at least some level of casualties. No mention or apology, of course, for pulling all the troops out of the Obama-coined “dumb war” in the first place.

You may have noticed that I said “the report given to Congress.” That report was nothing short of an “FYI” from Barack to D.C. lawmakers that he has made a decision, and there isn’t anything they can do about it. Much like his tendency to use executive orders to cut Congress out of his decision-making, this time he cited the War Powers Act as the basis for the move. Apparently, the backlash Obama faced over not consulting Congress on the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner swap didn’t phase him in the least, because he’s right back at it again. He’s probably just worried that too many in Washington would have voted against sending troops over there…you know, the same way he would have voted “no” had he actually been a senator when the Iraq War Resolution came up for debate.

For those of you keeping tabs on specifically how the administration is responding to the chaos, it would appear that we’re seeing a two pronged-strategy so far:

1. 275 troops.
2. See if Iran wants to be our friend.

Wow, I feel safer already!