The Pentagon acknowledged Thursday that it had been providing journalists and the public with an inaccurate count of the number of U.S. troops deployed to Syria, with a spokesperson for the department telling members of the press that the actual figure is two times higher than what was previously disclosed.
"We have been briefing you regularly that there are approximately 900 U.S. troops deployed to Syria," Pentagon Press Secretary Pat Ryder told reporters during a briefing on Thursday. "In light of the situation in Syria and the significant interest, we recently learned that those numbers were higher, and so asked to look into it. I learned today that in fact there are approximately 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria."
Ryder said the roughly 1,100 additional U.S. forces are considered "temporary rotational forces that deploy to meet shifting mission requirements," while the other 900 troops are "on longer-term deployments."
There is also an undisclosed number of private U.S. contractors operating in Syria, as The Intercept's Nick Turse has reported.
Progressive lawmakers, and some Republicans, have argued that U.S. troops should be withdrawn from Syria given the lack of clear legal authorization for their continued presence.
The Pentagon spokesperson could not provide an exact date on which the extra 1,100 troops were deployed to Syria, but he said they were there "clearly before the fall" of former President Bashar al-Assad's government earlier this month.
The U.S. maintains it was not involved in the rebel offensive that toppled the Assad government, and on Friday a delegation of senior American officials arrived in Damascus for the first U.S. diplomatic mission to Syria's capital since Assad's fall.
Drop Site's Jeremy Scahill, who has long reported on covert U.S. military activities overseas, expressed incredulity at Ryder's comments during Thursday's briefing.
"How does the Pentagon 'recently learn' that it has more than double the number of U.S. troops in Syria than it claimed to have a day earlier?" Scahill asked.
