The deployment of 100 U.S. troops to advise in the fight against Central Africa's Lord's Resistance Army has triggered speculation about the precise role such troops will play and the extent to which they may engage in combat without express congressional approval.
It's generally agreed the troops are Special Forces sent to help Ugandan and Congolese soldiers gather intelligence and coordinate logistics. But questions remain about how far they'll go toward using more robust U.S. capabilities, like UAV drones, to potentially take down the LRA's notoriously violent leader, Joseph Kony.
"A possible scenario," according to Geoffrey Corn, a former military lawyer and World Politics Review contributor who teaches at South Texas College of Law, "is that they'll be used to collect intel on the LRA to identify a high-value target that the forces there might have trouble reaching or attacking."