“That’s what he said he wants. That’s what he told me and [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford]. He said, ‘Get this done as soon as possible. I’d like to not leave this to my successor,’ ” Carter said Friday an event hosted by Politico.
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He added that Obama called for the process to be accelerated last fall — about a year after the U.S. first began its counter-ISIS campaign.
The administration now has only nine months left, but Carter said he’s optimistic.
“I’m confident that we’ll do it. And we have an operational plan now,” he said.
A military spokesman later Friday gave a more cautious assessment as to when the coalition could take back Mosul and Raqqa, ISIS’s respective strongholds in Iraq and Syria.
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