Tag Archives: ISIS

The New York Times reports: United States troops have resumed large-scale counter terrorism missions against the Islamic State in northern Syria, military officials say, nearly two months after President Trump’s abrupt order to withdraw American troops opened the way for a bloody Turkish cross-border offensive. The new operations show that despite Mr. Trump’s earlier demand for a complete withdrawal of …

The Associated Press reports: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday issued a veiled threat suggesting Turkey could release the Islamic State group prisoners it holds and send them to Europe, angered at a EU decision to impose sanctions on his country over its drilling for gas in Mediterranean waters off Cyprus. Speaking to reporters before a visit to the …

NBC News reports: Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney first learned about the U.S. military raid against ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi after the operation was already underway, according to five current and former senior administration officials. Mulvaney was at home in South Carolina when President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter Saturday night that “Something very big has …

The New York Times reports: American forces and their Kurdish-led partners in Syria had been conducting as many as a dozen counterterrorism missions a day against Islamic State militants, officials said. That has stopped. Those same partners, the Syrian Democratic Forces, had also been quietly releasing some Islamic State prisoners and incorporating them into their ranks, in part as a …

Agence France-Presse reports: President Donald Trump says members of the Islamic State group who were being held in prisons by Kurdish fighters in Syria have been deliberately released in an effort to make him look bad. But senior U.S. officials are casting doubt on those claims. Those officials say some Syrian Kurdish forces have moved north to fight Turkish troops …

The Associated Press reports: Turkish forces approached a key Kurdish-held town in northern Syria on Sunday, setting off clashes that allowed hundreds of Islamic State supporters to escape from a camp for displaced people and prompted U.S. soldiers to withdraw from a nearby base. A U.S. military official said the situation across northeastern Syria was “deteriorating rapidly” and that American …

CBS News reports: President Trump on Wednesday blasted top intelligence leaders for being “wrong” about their new assessment on Iran’s nuclear developments. U.S. intelligence leaders one day earlier shared a new assessment with the Senate Intelligence Committee that the state is not currently developing nuclear weapons, findings that directly contradict the president’s claims. The president, who claimed Iran has recently …

NBC News reports: U.S. service members were among those killed by an explosion in Syria on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the coalition fighting the Islamic State group said. Earlier, a senior Kurdish security official told NBC News that members of the U.S.-led coalition were caught up in a blast at a market in the northern city of Manbij. The official …

Mediaite reports: On New Year’s Eve, President Trump apparently felt the need to clear the air and defend his position via a short series of tweets that explained his process as a simple fulfillment of his campaign promise. And, as his is wont, he included some not-so-subtle digs at his detractors. Trump’s dig at “some failed generals” is certainly a …

“The way [Trump] did it in the face of the president of Turkey, basically abandoning our allies [the Kurds], who the Turks see as terrorists, is just a horrible piece of foreign policy. I am very disappointed in the president that he would do this in this fashion. We need to stand for our allies, particularly allies who have fought …

“There doesn’t seem to be any strategic rationale for the decision. And if there’s no strategic rationale for the decision then you have to ask, why was the decision made? People around the world are asking this and some of our friends and our allies in the Middle East are asking, did Erdogan blackmail the president? Was there a payoff …

Politico reports: President Donald Trump claimed Saturday he gave outgoing Defense Secretary James Mattis “a second chance” after the retired Marine general was ousted from military leadership under the Obama administration. Former President Barack Obama fired Mattis as head of U.S. Central Command in 2013 in large part because of Mattis’ increasingly hawkish posture toward Iran. Mattis resigned from the …

Mediaite reports: President Donald Trump tweeted this morning to decry “mostly FAKE” news about the shutdown and his decision to withdraw from Syria. He also defended his Syria decision, though he said this time that ISIS is “largely defeated.” Trump’s tweets were posted around the time news broke that the top U.S. envoy to the global coalition fighting ISIS submitted …

NBC News reports: Brett McGurk, the special envoy for the global coalition to defeat Islamic State, submitted his resignation on Friday, effective Dec. 31, a U.S.State Department official said on Saturday. A person familiar with the matter said McGurk has quit because he objected to President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out U.S. troops from Syria, a decision followed by …

The Hill reports: “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade on Friday said President Trump had “re-founded ISIS” and was giving Russia “a big win” with his decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria. Kilmeade made the remarks during an interview with White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. “He also is doing exactly what he criticized President Obama for doing. …

Lindsey Graham, like many others, has called out Trump’s lie that ISIS has been defeated. Therefore he too must be destroyed. “I give the president all the credit in the world for changing their policies regarding the fight against ISIS, but I will not buy into the narrative that they have been defeated,” Graham said, adding that he had just …

Mediaite reports: Co-host Brian Kilmeade did not hold back in criticizing the Commander in Chief’s stunning announcement via Twitter plans to withdrawal 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria, saying it was “stunning and irresponsible” and blindsided Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. As many commentators have pointed out, in no way has ISIS been “defeated” in Syria — contrary to what is …

From the Russia state agency TASS: The US decision to pull its troops from Syria creates good prospects for a political solution in that Arab country, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Maria Zakharova said on Channel One on Wednesday. “A milestone story which might evolve from this decision is a real prospect for a political solution,” she said adding that the …

Mediaite reports: Following reports that the president is planning a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria (along with his proclamation on Twitter that ISIS has been defeated in Syria) Graham broke from the White House and bashed the move. “With all due respect, ISIS is not defeated in Syria, Iraq, and after just returning from visiting there — certainly …

The Wall Street Journal reports: In an abrupt reversal, the U.S. military is preparing to withdraw its forces from northeastern Syria, people familiar with the matter said Wednesday, a move that throws the American strategy in the Middle East into turmoil. U.S. officials began informing partners in northeastern Syria of their plans to begin immediately pulling American forces out of …