JUST IN: President Trump addresses troops in Iraq

JUST IN: President Trump’s green light for Turkey to massacre our Kurdish allies must be countered | Trudy Rubin. addresses troops in Iraq

The place Mr. Trump chose to visit is the one theater of war where he has not promised a rapid drawdown of forces — and it is where he claims his greatest military victory, the defeat of the Islamic State in Mosul, the Iraqi city where the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared the beginning of its self-proclaimed caliphate. The assault on Mosul by Iraqi forces, backed by Americans, began under President Barack Obama but culminated in the summer of 2017 under Mr. Trump.

If Trump had mastered Middle East 101, he would know that Turkey has always been loathe to crack down on ISIS because the jihadis were fighting Erdogan’s real enemies: Syrian president Bashar al Assad — and the Kurds." (1)Trump's comments in Iraq: "Trump described how he gave “the generals” multiple six month “extensions” got get out of Syria. Trump said: “They said again, recently, can we have more time? I said, ‘Nope.’ You can’t have any more time. You’ve had enough time." (1)

Mr. Trump told reporters on the ground at Joint Base al Asad that he has no plans to withdraw troops from Iraq. Instead, he said, America may use Iraq as a military base to carry out operations on Syria and fight the Islamic State.
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“If we see something happening with ISIS that we don’t like, we can hit them so fast and so hard they really won’t know what the hell happened,” Mr. Trump said, according to Bloomberg News. “We’ve knocked them silly.”

Mr. Trump’s statement reflects one of the strategies proposed by the Pentagon after he announced his decision to withdraw troops from Syria last week. With British and French forces still on the ground, American commandos would be based in Iraq on the border where they could launch raids and other missions into Syria."Donald Trump has made an unannounced visit to Iraq, leaving behind a partially shuttered US government to greet American troops.

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Trump’s trip was shrouded in secrecy. Air Force One flew overnight from Washington, landing at an airbase west of Baghdad under the cover of darkness on Wednesday evening. It is his first visit with troops stationed in a troubled region.

.nytimes