The Pentagon yesterday presented the White House with possible new battle plans to defeat the Islamic State group, after President Donald Trump demanded top brass find additional ways to destroy the militants.
A pillar of Trump’s campaign was to quicken the fight against IS, which despite losing thousands of fighters still controls parts of northern Syria and Iraq, and he berated the Barack Obama administration for taking too long to do so.
Trump had claimed to have a secret plan to defeat IS, but never disclosed what this might be.
He repeatedly pledged to “bomb the hell” out of the militants and even threatened to kill family members of suspected IS fighters.
Shortly after taking office, the new president gave the Pentagon 30 days to come up with a comprehensive review of the fight against IS, which a US-led coalition has been bombing in Iraq and Syria since late summer 2014, while also using commandos to train and advise local forces. The initial version of that review is now complete, and Defence Secretary Jim Mattis presented the findings to Trump’s top national security advisers yesterday.
Though broad in scope, the options outlined in the classified review are preliminary and need to be further refined, Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain Jeff Davis said.
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