“I’d assume this was a final push in the Middle Euphrates River Valley to clear the small ISIS-held villages out near the Iraqi border,” Stein told The Daily Beast.
Corker said “at least 20,000” ISIS fighters are still in the region. The “major clearing operation” Corker referenced “would have changed the dynamic tremendously” in Iraq and Syria, where ISIS has lost significant territory in recent years. He later clarified that the operation was intended to take place in “six to eight” weeks.
“So to pull the plug—it’s just hard to understand,” Corker said of Trump’s decision to pull U.S. forces from Syria. “If you want to move away from Syria, why wouldn’t you do it after you’ve done the work that you’ve been planning for so long? Why would you pull the plug in advance of that? That’s the part that I think is heartbreaking to those in the military that are aware of what we were getting ready to do, to those of us who supported the clearing of ISIS and the things that have happened on the ground in Syria.”
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