Secretary Of Defense Says US To Expand Its Operations In Syria

Fact checked

Jim Mattis confrims that France has reinforced the US with special forces

US  Secretary of Defense James Mattis has said that the United States is not about to withdraw but will actually be expanding its operations in Syria.

The expansion, he claimed on Thursday, comes in response to increased ISIS offensives in the region.

Mattis also said that operations against ISIS would increase on the Iraqi side of the border while France had, in the last two weeks, reinforced the U.S. in Syria with special forces.

The French President Emmanuel Macron has become one of the strongest advocates for a prolonged American stay in Syria. He recently said that the US, France and their allies should not leave Syria when the conflict with ISIS was over, but should stay and build a “new Syria”

Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We are continuing the fight, we are going to expand it and bring in more regional support. This is the biggest shift we’re making right now.”

RT reports: In his statement, Mattis maintained that the US was not stepping in to take sides in the ongoing conflict in Syria. “No military solution is possible in the Syrian civil war,” Mattis said. “We continue to support a diplomatic solution as part of the UN-led peace process.”

President Donald Trump had previously stated that US forces would withdraw from Syria once Islamic State (ISIS) was defeated, but has not yet provided any kind of timeline for when that might be.

At a White House news conference on Tuesday, the president said that US troops would be “coming home relatively soon,” but he also wants to leave a “strong and lasting footprint” in the region.

Before running for office, Trump had repeatedly warned his predecessor, Barack Obama, against intervention in Syria. Intervention, he warned, would be costly and had “no upside and tremendous downside.” Even last month, Trump announced plans to bring US troops home, and said that the US would  “let other people take care of it.”

French President Emmanuel Macron, addressing Congress on Wednesday, pledged that France and the US would “stand together in Syria.” Macron had cooperated closely with Trump in the runup to the missile attack on Syrian government targets earlier this month.

At Thursday’s hearing, Mattis said that US forces would launch “a re-energized effort” against targets in the middle Euphrates river valley in the days ahead, and increased operations on the Iraq side of the Syria/Iraq border, with the help of French special forces.

Since 2014, the US has lent its support to anti-government forces and Kurdish rebels in Syria, under the auspices of fighting ISIS. Following US intervention, and later Russian intervention in 2015, ISIS has lost roughly 98 percent of its territory throughout Syria and Iraq, and now controls only a few isolated pockets of desert.

Mattis assured Senators that the US would maintain communications with Russian forces, to ensure that the two powers do not come into conflict while both fight ISIS in Syria.

“Right now in Syria, we have an open and never interrupted deconfliction communication line that has worked pretty well to make certain we do not run afoul of one another’s forces or one another’s operations,” he said.

4 Comments

  1. I have never heard so much nonsensical lies as these man can dish out. To say they are fighting against the very groups they fund, train, sponsor and support to fight on their behalf just boggles the mind. I just don’t know what to say anymore about these men; who simply lie and lie and lie and just expect the masses to believe them, even though they know that we know they lie about everything. Quite frankly they just do not care at all what we think, or the value of any human life, which equates to demonic influence at best or possession at worst

  2. UNIVERSAL WAR
    3. We (deep state) must be in a position to respond to every act of opposition by war with the
    neighbors of that country which dares to oppose us: but if these neighbors (Syria, Iran, etc…) should also
    venture to stand collectively together against us, then we must offer resistance by a
    universal war.
    4. The principal factor of success in the political is the secrecy of its undertakings: the
    word should not agree with the deeds of the diplomat.
    5. We must compel the governments of the GOYIM to take action in the direction
    favored by our widely conceived plan, already approaching the desired consummation,
    by what we shall represent as public opinion, secretly promoted by us through the means
    of that so-called “Great Power” – THE PRESS, WHICH, WITH A FEW EXCEPTIONS
    THAT MAY BE DISREGARDED, IS ALREADY ENTIRELY IN OUR HANDS.
    6. In a word, to sum up our system of keeping the governments of the goyim in Europe in
    check, we shall show our strength to one of them by terrorist attempts and to all, if we
    allow the possibility of a general rising against us, we shall respond with the guns of
    America or China or Japan. (The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905; Japan; Iraq and
    Afghanistan – Ed.). protocol #7

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