WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump is leaning in favor of a new Pentagon plan to keep a small contingent of U.S. troops in eastern Syria, perhaps numbering about 200, to combat the Islamic State group and block the advance of Syrian government and Russian forces into the region's coveted oil fields
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is leaning in favor of a new Pentagon plan to keep a small contingent of U.S. troops in eastern Syria, perhaps numbering about 200, to combat the Islamic State group and block the advance of Syrian government and Russian forces into the region’s coveted oil fields, a senior administration official said Sunday.
A senior administration official said Sunday that Trump has since last week been considering a plan to leave a couple of hundred troops in northeast Syria, near the border with Iraq, for counterterrorism efforts. The official said it is a concept Trump favors. The officials indicated that Trump could describe the continued deployment of the small contingent of troops as a thoughtful, reasonable way to help safeguard regional and U.S. security without violating his campaign pledge.
But the White House has struggled to articulate a clear position on what the administration is trying to accomplish as Erdogan has clearly been undeterred and Trump, who hates appearing weak, has shrugged off the fighting on his Twitter feed and in a campaign rally. From there, Esper said, U.S. troops would “help defend Iraq” and “perform a counter-ISIS mission” — presumably carrying out periodic cross-border Special Operations raids and conducting armed drone strikes against Islamic State cells. ISIS has already sought to exploit the chaos in northern Syria to break out insurgents from Kurdish-run jails, to attack Kurdish fighters and to regain momentum overall.
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