as you know, the entire frontage of the turkish syrian border is about 440 or so kilometers. the area of the incursion, the turkish incursion, is about 125 kilometers. it s on the west, a village, and another on the east. and that s where the two oh people or us were. we withdrew forces throughout all of syria. we remain colocated with them. the sdf is still guarding prisons in the area that have been detained over time. so we are still conducting operations. obviously, this incursion that was initiated by the turks has had some effect, but yes, we are still colocated. with respect to the incursion itself, right now the turks have conducted air strikes, with a fixed-wing manned aircraft. they have constructed conductes of vehicles, in both reconnaissance and air strike mode. they have conducted artillery strikes, and some direct fire
it is not the case. what we saw in the iraq war was we were able to defeat them, and they could come back in another form, and they could go to this turkish incursion leaving isis free to regenerate this this is a terrible policy, and it is broiling the region in more violence as we just heard from the people on the ground. i am trying to figure out if this is intentional. it would not have taken anybody with your level of experience to understand what was going to happen. or this was bundled foreign
are feeling quite betrayed by the departure of u.s. forces. never say never, but it would be really difficult now for the trump administration to reverse course and try to fore stall this turkish incursion. they ve created civilian casualties. they ve already damaged and destroyed parts of two different cities along that border. and we don t have the capacity right now to stop that. not to mention our syrian democratic forces just in the last hour or so announced that they were suspending all operations against isis to focus on the turkish incursion. good luck getting them back on side with you to stop this. a ugs offici.s. official is cnn that the syrian democratic forces have suspended these counter isis operations because they re now embroiled in this battle with turkey. we have the author of black
a comeback in several isolated pockets throughout the region. what we could see is some of these is lattic state fighters there s about 12,000 hold up in prison. and 48,000 family members, men, women and children in detention camps throughout northern syrian, if these syrian democratic forces are distracted, if they walk away from guarding these people to fight the turkish incursion, they could let them go. then they d be able to reform the caliphate that was defeated in march. this region has been reeling for the last several years. they don t want to fight them again. they don t want to see a massive fresh wave of refugees and internally displaced people moving out of syria once again. not just here into iraq, but also into europe which totally upended european politics for several years. so these are the threats that don t just face the middle east, but really kind of the whole world. craig?
the national security interest. if you believe isis is still a threat to american interests and our allies and partners and which it is and the military and intelligence community say that then you have to sustain the victory over them. you ve destroyed them on the ground but not as a network. that is what the small groups were doing in syria to defeat the network and create a sustainable set of conditions and letting turkey if will make it harder for our sdf allies to fight isis because they re going to be forced to react to turkish incursion. swept bipartisan condemnation of the president s decision, including from republicans, gloria. huge mistake, betraying an ally. disastrous and sure as isis come back and short-sighted and irresponsible and a stain on america s honor. catastrophic mistake. terribly unwise. i could go on. these are from republicans including republican leaders. you know what i want to know?