The State Department held a special press briefing Thursday with Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, and spokeswoman Heather Nauert. The focus was the 2017 successes against the Islamic State (ISIS).
The special envoy position was created in 2014 to oversee the international coordination of the struggle against ISIS, which, at the time, controlled vast swaths of territory in its Iraq and Syria-based “caliphate.” McGurk has served in this role since 2015 when former President Barack Obama appointed him. His tenure has witnessed, especially since the beginning of the year, the virtual eradication of that terrorist pseudo-state.McGurk told reporters that he recalled just how dire the situation remained only a year ago. “I think it’s worth recalling ISIS used to be controlling basically a state, 100,000 square kilometers, the size of the UK,” he told reporters, adding later:
[W]hen President Trump came in and Secretary Tillerson came in, we faced real critical challenges in terms of major [ISIS] plotting attacks against us and against our partner homelands coming from Syria and Iraq. And they were aspiring to kind of major, 9/11-type attacks. … And so long as they had these safe havens and sanctuaries, particularly cities, a city like Raqqa, and at the time they still controlled half of Mosul, it was really hard to root them out."
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Linked article recirculates the false narrative of Syria using chemical weapons, and places secondary status to Russian efforts dealing blows to ISIS and our lovely moderate rebels.
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