"Take the chips out of your cell phones" ... right, ok, that seems prudent ... "especially the international ones, we will give you other chips." ... wat???

(because surely sigint systems are incapable of correlating that an IMEI which was just using a foreign SIM now has a local one?)

If I was one of those international soldiers and was told I'd be under a US soldier/veteran, I'd just leave. War is America's bread and butter, it may seem they're helping but they wouldn't want it to end so swiftly. Then you're just a cannon fodder for their long-con military industrial complex profits.

A veteran because they can deny direct involvement?