National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien dismissed as “Twitter intel” the suggestion that more than 100 captured Islamic State fighters escaped from prisons in Syria amid fighting between Turkish soldiers and Syrian Kurds. But that was a figure provided by the secretary of defense and a top official in the State Department.
President Trump said nearly all of the land once controlled by ISIS in Syria and Iraq has been retaken and “it all took place since our election.” But even the State Department’s senior envoy to the anti-Islamic State coalition said in December that half of the ISIS caliphate was recaptured under Trump’s leadership.
The Paris bombings and other recent terrorist attacks have given rise to a political debate within the United States about the Obama administration’s plan to admit Syrian refugees. But the facts about refugees are being distorted in some instances.
Who’s responsible for withdrawing all U.S. combat troops from Iraq at the end of 2011? Jeb Bush says President Obama is to blame, while Hillary Clinton’s campaign says President George W. Bush signed the agreement that set the withdrawal date.
President Obama enjoys his sports analogies, so let’s just say that he fumbled when he was asked whether he made a “misjudgment” eight months ago in dismissing the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as the equivalent of “a jayvee team.”
MoveOn.org Political Action began airing ads attacking four Republican senators in their home states, accusing them of favoring escalation of the war in Iraq.