As ISIL creeps ever closer to the Ain Al Asad air base where 320 U.S. Marines are training the Iraqi Army, the Obama administration double-downed on its pledge to never put boots on the ground – even while insisting it’s the only strategy to defeat the militant Islamists. Samantha Power, the United States’ ambassador to the UN, told MSNBC, “Ground troops are necessary but they are not going to be American ground troops. You have to get the Iraqis and ultimately the Syrian moderate opposition groups up so they can fight the fight on the ground. There has to be a fight on the ground. You can’t do this by air. Everybody acknowledges that. We also saw having deployed so many troops over so many years that unless the Iraqis congeal and have a kind of inclusive political system and have the military capability on the ground, anything we do is going to be stop gap.” Yesterday, ISIL took 90% of al-Baghdadi, a town that is a 13-minute drive from the base. While the Obama administration wants the fight to go according to their political plans, the reality on the ground may disrupt those plans. More…