DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Trump Orders Pentagon to Pull U.S. Troops Out of Syria

U.S. Officials Try to Slow Trump’s ‘Everybody Out’ of Syria Order


Confusion is the only constant for the future course of the U.S. war after the president took the world by surprise by suggesting an imminent withdrawal.

Spencer Ackerman
12.19.18 1:31 PM ET
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President Donald Trump may have declared the so-called Islamic State “defeated,” sparking talk of a U.S. withdrawal from the former ISIS stronghold of northeastern Syria. But administration officials, several of whom were taken by surprise, indicated an effort was underway to stop or slow a pullout.

“U.S. forces will continue the fight against ISIS,” a White House official who requested anonymity told The Daily Beast.

The future scope of that fight is less clear than ever. Some within the administration said Trump had indeed reached a decision to leave Syria. “The president said ‘Everybody out,’” a senior administration official told The Daily Beast.

Confusion about the U.S. goals in Syria and the sustainability of a strategy to achieve them has been a consistent feature of 2018, a year in which the president and various senior officials have expanded and contracted the goals at least four times.
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“If Trump traded all of northeast Syria for a couple of missile batteries, he got his lunch eaten.”

— A senior Senate Republican national security aide
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Before Wednesday’s statement from Trump, the most recent revision came from national security adviser John Bolton in September. Bolton, an Iran hawk, tethered the persistence of the U.S. presence not on a final battlefield defeat of ISIS, but the withdrawal of Iranian forces there.

The White House official suggested that aspects of Bolton’s strategy remained in place, even if some U.S. troops pulled back.

“We will continue to use tools of national power, including economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure, as leverage to press for the withdrawal of Iranian-backed forces,” the official told The Daily Beast.

Yet the official added a harder-edged warning suggesting that military force against Iran in Syria remained an option: “Iran knows the U.S. stands ready to re-engage at all levels to defend American interests.”

Whether that approach will substitute for the estimated 2,000 troops in northeast Syria or complement it remains unclear. The State Department cancelled its scheduled press briefing. At the Pentagon, where officials on Wednesday signaled to the Wall Street Journal and CNN that preparations for a “full” withdrawal were underway, Defense Secretary James Mattis refused to answer questions.

A senior administration official who briefed reporters on Wednesday afternoon conceded that ISIS has a “remaining pocket” of fighters and territory in Syria, but that it could be “eliminated both by our own guys and by regional and partner forces.” The official did not have answers about the timetable for the withdrawal, nor whether airstrikes will remain a U.S. option in northeastern Syria.

As well, the administration official retroactively redefined the Trump administration’s stated objectives in Syria. While the administration on innumerable occasions described the mission as the “enduring defeat of ISIS,” the official said instead that “it was always to destroy the territorial caliphate of ISIS.” (In October, a spokesman for the U.S. military command in Iraq and Syria remarked, “ISIS is territorially defeated, but until we achieve an enduring defeat, we will continue to fight.”)

Although the senior administration official denied it, multiple foreign and U.S. officials told The Daily Beast that Trump’s announcement came as a surprise, without prior briefings or warnings.

Four sources who speak often to Trump, two inside and two outside the administration, told The Daily Beast that in the past week, Trump did not bring up pulling the U.S. military presence out of Syria. The news on Wednesday morning came as a surprise to them, as they’re accustomed to when Trump polling his various official advisers and friends on their opinions before he goes public with a major decision. To them, Wednesday's leaks and subsequent public confirmation by Trump and his White House team was rushed, quickly cobbled together, and formed without any clear timeline.

A different White House official compared it to a “snap decision.”

It has been a whirlwind year for the U.S. in Syria. In January, Rex Tillerson, then secretary of state, gave a speech pledging an “indefinite” commitment to Syria, angering Trump. By late March, Trump said in a speech that he would pull out “very soon,” only to have White House and national-security administration officials walk that back. By September, Bolton had replaced the national security adviser who maintained the morass-like status quo in Syria, H.R. McMaster. Bolton, in an even further departure from Trump’s stated preferences, tethered the U.S. presence to Iran’s, unnerving some Pentagon officials.

On Monday, the chief diplomatic official responsible for Syria, special representative James Jeffrey, indicated to reporters that the U.S. troop presence in northeastern Syria remained tethered to several unfinished missions.

“When we say we’re going to be present not forever in Syria but present until our conditions – enduring defeat of [ISIS], as was said earlier, the withdrawal of all Iranian-commanded forces from the entirety of Syria, and an irreversible political process,” Jeffrey said.

On Wednesday, Dana White, the chief Pentagon spokesperson, said that despite the “liberation” of ISIS-held territory, “the campaign against ISIS is not over.” But White confirmed that the Pentagon had “started the process of returning U.S. troops home from Syria as we transition to the next phase of the campaign.” She said the Pentagon would not provide “further details” about how many troops the U.S. will remove, how many if any will remain, and on what schedule.

Her statement followed an earlier Wednesday line from her colleague, Col. Rob Manning, who had signaled continuity with the current strategy: “At this time, we continue to work by, with and through our partners in the region.” White said the U.S. military would “continue working with our partners and allies to defeat ISIS wherever it operates.”

That’s the central question for the U.S.’ Kurdish allies, who have performed the majority of ground combat against ISIS in northeast Syria. Turkey considers those Kurds to be terrorists and their presence in a functionally autonomous area of Syria – patrolled by U.S. servicemembers – to be intolerable. The NATO ally suggested last week that it would launch a military campaign “east of the Euphrates,” where the U.S.-Kurdish presence is – something the Pentagon called “unacceptable.”

But on Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had a phone conversation with Trump. Erdogan said he got “positive” reception from his American counterpart, without supplying further details. Then, on Tuesday, the State Department greenlit a $3.5 billion sale of Patriot missile batteries to Ankara – prompting speculation on Capitol Hill that Erdogan had catered to Trump’s transactional inclinations and his long-standing desire to pull out of Syria.

"If Trump traded all of northeast Syria for a couple of missile batteries,” said a senior Senate Republican national security aide, “he got his lunch eaten.”

The senior administration official who briefed reporters said the pullout was “not something [Trump] discussed with President Erdogan. He has informed President Erdogan, as a neighbor of Syria.”

The Kurdish news agency, Rudaw, called Trump’s apparent withdrawal decision “a shocking reversal of U.S. policy in Syria, especially in light of ongoing operations against ISIS.” Pentagon officials have warned of an ISIS resurgence. A CIA official declined a request for comment.

In October, the acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Russell Travers, told a Senate panel that despite “substantial” U.S. battlefield successes, ISIS “remains an adaptive and dangerous adversary, and is already tailoring its strategy to sustain operations amid mounting losses.” Specifically in Iraq and Syria, ISIS was bivouacking to rural areas “in order to support a long-term insurgency,” Travers said.

—with additional reporting by Asawin Suebsaeng, Kimberly Dozier and Roy Guttman

Trump orders US troops out of Syria, declares victory over ISIS; senators slam action as mistake


Tom Vanden Brook and David Jackson, USA TODAY Published 9:48 a.m. ET Dec. 19, 2018 | Updated 5:39 p.m. ET Dec. 19, 2018
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WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump called Wednesday for a U.S. withdrawal from Syria over the apparent objections of military advisers and a bipartisan group of lawmakers.

The withdrawal of the more than 2,000 troops is based on Trump’s decision that the mission against ISIS is complete, a U.S. official told USA TODAY.

Military leaders, including Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, in recent weeks and months have spoken of the need for U.S. troops to remain in the eastern part of the country to help stabilize it and allow for peace negotiations to proceed.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., derided Trump’s decision to withdraw, likening it to those made by former President Barack Obama to announce ahead of time plans to reduce forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Withdrawal of this small American force in Syria would be a huge Obama-like mistake,” Graham tweeted.


Lindsey Graham
✔
@LindseyGrahamSC
Withdrawal of this small American force in Syria would be a huge Obama-like mistake.

The Washington Post
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@washingtonpost
Breaking: Trump administration plans to pull U.S. troops from Syria immediately, defense official says https://wapo.st/2Lrlrrg

3,893
10:09 AM - Dec 19, 2018
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In a statement, Graham added that Trump’s action would represent a “big win for ISIS, Iran, Bashar al Assad of Syria, and Russia.”

“I fear it will lead to devastating consequences for our nation, the region, and throughout the world,” Graham said.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., tweeted that the move was a "major blunder" and against the Pentagon's advice.


Marco Rubio
✔
@marcorubio
The decision to pull out of Syria was made despite overwhelming military advice against it.

It is a major blunder. It it isn’t reversed it will haunt this administration & America for years to come.

3,803
1:59 PM - Dec 19, 2018
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New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, top Democrat on the Foreign Relations panel, called it a “dangerous decision” that would destabilize the region, endanger Kurdish allies and embolden America’s enemies.

“We’re leaving the Kurds at risk, we’re creating a vacuum, and we’re doing it in a way that puts Israel at risk” because of Iran’s presence in Syria, Menendez said.

In Russia, a foreign ministry spokesperson applauded Trump’s decision, saying it could help create “a real prospect for a political solution” in Syria, according to TASS, the Russian state-owned news agency.

Trump's announcement should not surprise anybody because he has promised it, according to a senior administration official who was not authorized to speak publicly. The official would not say why Trump apparently didn't inform high-ranking officials of his decision. The Pentagon is developing the timeline for the removal of troops.

The U.S. will continue to apply pressure on Assad and his Iranian allies, the official said, but referred questions to the Pentagon about whether U.S. warplanes would continue to strike ISIS targets.

In statements later Wednesday, White House and Pentagon spokeswomen equivocated on the “defeat” of ISIS that Trump referred to.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Wednesday that the U.S. has "defeated the territorial caliphate."

"These victories over ISIS in Syria do not signal the end of the Global Coalition or its campaign," Sanders said in a statement. "We have started returning United States troops home as we transition to the next phase of this campaign.” She did not offer details on what the next phase was.

Dana White, the chief Pentagon spokeswoman, went even further, saying the fight against ISIS continues.

"The Coalition has liberated the ISIS-held territory, but the campaign against ISIS is not over," White said in a statement. "We have started the process of returning U.S. troops home from Syria as we transition to the next phase of the campaign."

Yet in his tweet earlier Wednesday, Trump declared victory.

“We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” he wrote.

Despite Trump’s assertion, fighting by U.S.-led forces continues in Syria.


Donald J. Trump
✔
@realDonaldTrump
We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.

76.6K
9:29 AM - Dec 19, 2018

On Saturday, warplanes struck ISIS targets 47 times, U.S. Central Command announced early Wednesday. The bombs struck 20 fighting units and destroyed petroleum tanks, a tunnel, a vehicle and a mortar-firing position, the military said.

According to a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, ISIS is far from obliterated. The Washington-based think tank estimates 20,000 to 30,000 Islamic State militants may still be in Iraq and Syria.

As recently as last week, officials said U.S. troops may need a longer stay to ensure that the military's accomplishments are "enduring."

"I think it's fair to say Americans will remain on the ground after the physical defeat of the caliphate, until we have the pieces in place to ensure that that defeat is enduring," said Brett McGurk, special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS.

Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined earlier in December to put a timeline on withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, suggesting they would be needed for some time to establish conditions for a long-term peace agreement.

"We still have a long way to go, and so I'd be reluctant to give a fixed time," Dunford said in a forum held by the Washington Post.

The U.S.-led coalition has been fighting ISIS in the countries since 2014.

More: Syria conflict explained: How did we end up here?

U.S. troops, most of them special-operations units, have been training local security forces in eastern Syria.

In September, Mattis told reporters that declaring victory and leaving Syria would be a mistake.

"I think that getting rid of the caliphate doesn't mean you then blindly say OK, we got rid of it, march out, and then wonder why the caliphate comes back and how many times have we seen – look at even Iraq where they're still on the hunt for them. And they're still trying to come back."

Contributing: Deirdre Shesgreen, Kim Hjelmgaard and the Associated Press

Putin wants us out.

What a quaint viewpoint. You really need to get over your Russians Are Coming fears.

No, he needs the troops for wall building. China can do it damnit, so can we.

Odd that trump did this against pretty much everyone’s advisement.

Putin must have made a phone call.

President Trump’s order Wednesday to remove all 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria should be seen and celebrated for what it is: a great victory over the ISIS terrorist group and the fulfillment of his pledge not to do nation-building.

Trump campaigned for the White House on an unambiguous pledge to crush ISIS. Just one week into his presidency he ordered the Pentagon to develop a plan to “demolish and destroy” the group. Then U.S. and allied forces did just that.

All done, time to bring the boys home.

Trumpshroom BS.

Putin and Assad are killing Syrians and Putin wants us out...

Syria is key to a proposed pipelines to send middle eastern gas to the EU. That threatens Putin's biggest income stream. When we had a President that gave a damn about our oldest allies; we protected that plan.

Nothing is over there, ISIS was never that big of a threat. At it's peak it was growing too fast and brutally killing western thinking people. A hardline Islamic State was mostly a threat to Israel.

We were there for the oil and gas deals. Period.

https://www.news.com.au/world/middle-eas...5e280b63a9afb74

The headline reads...

Putin backs US withdrawal from Syria as right decision

Financial Times

That headline should tell Americans all they need to know about why Trump is pulling out of Syria...he wants to please Putin.

Trump is more concerned about pleasing Putin..than following the advise of America's military leaders.

Remember when Obama pulled out of Iraq?...it was a mistake because the job was not done..history proved that point.

Why does Trump want to hand a victory to Putin?

Honestly this a good thing, but the motives are unclear and do not look good.

Well that’s odd, trump said ISIS was defeated. So who’s there left to fight?

Lol, can’t even maintain the lie for the entire day. Also, Russia and Syria are popping champagne now that trump is pulling the troops out. Yet another lie by trump.

More proof that Trump is an Idiot.,. Clearly being handled by Putin.,.

ISIS is NOT defeated.. They are pushed back, no question!

But as has been proven over and over again, if you take ground then leave, the bad guys just come back.

He's made Putin happy, but Israel can't be..

This is another in a long line of things he does to distract your eyes from virtually everything he's being investigated for.

This President is a crook...

Anti Intervention, getting out of conflict we don't belong in. Another Campaign promise from Trump.

Someone will always fill the void, so keep fighting forever. Makes sense.

Imagine that...

Somebody called me cynical for thinking Putin wanted us out... a news cycle later it is proven that I was right.

Obama allowed Russia in and they are not leaving without World War 3.
So Trump destroys ISIS and what is left of them are holed up in a small part of Syria.

You really don't think Assad and Putin can't mop them up without us?

Bring the Troops home and use all that saved money towards the Wall!

There is a fine line between 'crook' and 'cuck' where Putin and Trump are involved.

Yep, leave that big vacuum for Russia and Iran to fill...

I want us out of the middle eastern wars altogether too; but I want us to leave from a positions of power and leadership, not a tuck tail maneuver like this.

Good for you President Trump....Not one more drop of blood or parents losing a child or children losing fathers or any other sacrifice where we don't belong.


I find it quite ironic that the haters on the left call conservatives warmongers but, when you want to withdraw from war your in bed with Russia China etc,

It scares me more that you and POTUS seem to share the same critical thinking skills.

Facts are Facts. The Congress never declared war or approved of Military action in Syria. We therefore shouldn't be there in the first place.

Ahhh, Politics.

When was the last time 'Congress' declared a war?

Educate yourself!

When Congress last used its powers to declare war

Today marks an important anniversary in American history: the congressional declaration of war on Japan on December 8, 1941. But since then, Congress has rarely used its constitutional power formally issue a war declaration.

Congress approved a resolution declaring war with Japan on that fateful day, as the Senate unanimously voted for the resolution, 82-0. The House passed the resolution by a 388 to 1 vote, with Jeannette Rankin, a pacifist, opposing the move.

“Whereas the Imperial Government of Japan has committed unprovoked acts of war against the Government and the people of the United States of America: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the state of war between the United States and the Imperial Government of Japan which has thus been thrust upon the United States is hereby formally declared; and the President is hereby authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial Government of Japan; and, to bring the conflict to a successful termination, all the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States,” the resolution read.

Japan had tried to issue its own war declaration just before the Pearl Harbor attack, but it failed to do it before the attack in Hawaii.

Since then, the United States has only issued five other war declarations: against Germany and Italy (on December 11, 1941) and against Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania (on June 4, 1942).

And in total, war declarations were declared by Congress in the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, World War I and World War II.

The United States military involvement in Korea came as part of a United Nations effort, while the escalation of the Vietnam War followed a joint resolution passed by Congress as requested by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.

Since Vietnam, United States military actions have taken place as part of United Nations’ actions, in the context of joint congressional resolutions, or within the confines of the War Powers Resolution (also known as the War Powers Act) that was passed in 1973, over the objections (and veto) of President Richard Nixon.

For example, when President Obama approved the use of military force in Libya in 2011, it was the 132nd time that a President acted under the conditions of the War Powers Resolution since 1973.

It also seems unlikely that an official state of war could be declared in the near future, due to the legal differences between a “state of war” and an “authorization to use military force.”

As the CRS explains, a formal war declaration triggers a large number of domestic statutes, like the ones that took place during World War II.

“A declaration of war automatically brings into effect a number of statutes that confer special powers on the President and the Executive Branch, especially about measures that have domestic effect,” it says.

These include granting the President the direct power take over businesses and transportation systems as part of the war effort; the ability to detain foreign nationals; the power to conduct spying without any warrants domestically; and the power to use natural resources on public lands.

“An authorization for the use of force does not automatically trigger any of these standby statutory authorities. Some of them can come into effect if a state of war in fact comes into being after an authorization for the use of force is enacted; and the great majority of them, including many of the most sweeping ones, can be activated if the President chooses to issue a proclamation of a national emergency,” says the CRS.

“But an authorization for the use of force, in itself and in contrast to a declaration of war, does not trigger any of these standby authorities.”

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/when-congress-once-used-its-powers-to-declare-war

So... it scares you that I love our troops and want to keep them out of harms way …..pathetic.

We shouldn't be in Syria - and this is a good thing.

However, Trump did criticize as did I about letting Isis grow in our void when we pulled back prematurely. I was against going there back then, but once we were there - we needed to stay.

I feel and fear we in that same cycle right now. I don't think we should be there, however if we pull back and Isis grows again - that's on our heads, and Trumps.

The scary part is that you want Russia and Iran to control Syria. That you want us to abandon our allies the Kurds so Turkey can annihilate them. That this will send a message to the world that we will abandon our allies, weakening our ability to work with anyone on the global stage.

Being on the side of Russia and Iran is never a good thing. I'm sure that the military will tell you that. They've told Individual 1 that.

Individual 1 is not willing to fight World War 3 to push Russia out of what Obama gave away, Syria.

Our heads maybe you didn't notice that the scewy dems sat in congress and did NOTHING to help run the country for 2 years and got paid to resist any and all things TRUMP and they didn't gaf about America and Americans just non American criminal imigrants ….Willit

We've been there for a long time. No WW3.

And we kept our distance from the Russians as they kept their distance from us.

We warned each other when our forces were up to something because both sides know we risk WW3 if we get into direct conflict.

Obama gave Syria away because he is weak.
Risking killing the planet is not worth trying to fix his mistake.

Obama made a mistake, but this one by the fool on the hill could be worse.

You're a funny guy. Syria won't be given away until Individual 1 gives it away. Which he is doing now.

'It's One of the Reasons He Won': Rand Paul Backs Trump's Decision to Withdraw Troops From Syria

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) backed up President Trump in the face of harsh criticism from many Republicans over his surprise announcement that the 2,000-strong U.S. force will withdraw from Syria.

In a tweet Wednesday morning and in a subsequent Twitter video, Trump claimed victory over ISIS, explaining that was "my only reason" for supporting a U.S. troop presence in the war-torn country.

Speaking on "America's Newsroom" Thursday, Paul said American voters were promised in 2016 that Trump would remove the U.S. from foreign entanglements.

"It's one of the reasons he won the election," said Paul, arguing many Republicans want the U.S. to be "the world's policeman".

He said independent voters in places like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio want to see spending on "America First," for border security and infrastructure, not foreign wars.

http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/12/20/rand-paul-backs-trumps-decision-withdraw-troops-syria

Yet he promised to defeat ISIS. I guess the story just changes to suit the day.

He promised you could keep your doctor!

I've listed several lies of Individual 1 and you keep repeating the same one? Wonder why that is? lmfao

It was the biggest lie of all.

You mean all of Obama's. lol

Nope this one was worse...


Benghazi: Obama's Actions Amount To A Shameful Dereliction Of Duty

https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrar...y/#15ca574f359c

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/365393-how-quickly-ny-times-forgets-obamas-lies-and-frauds


Obama responded to Snowden’s stunning revelations of the National Security Agency’s vacuuming up millions of Americans’ personal data by going on the Jay Leno Show and proclaiming: “There is no spying on Americans.” But NSA’s definition of “terrorist suspect” was so ludicrously broad that it includes anyone “searching the web for suspicious stuff” (maybe including presidential lies). Obama’s verbal defenses of NSA spying collapsed like a row of houses of cards.

In early 2009, Obama visited Mexico and, in a spiel calling for the renewal of the assault weapon ban, asserted that “more than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States.” This vastly overstated the actual problem, since that statistic measured only firearms that Mexican authorities sent to the U.S. for tracing.

His administration then acted as if 90 percent was a goal, not a lie, launching a secret Fast and Furious gunwalking operation masterminded by the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agency, deluging Mexican drug gangs with high-powered weapons. At least 150 Mexicans were killed by guns illegally sent south of the border with Obama administration approval.

Obama’s animosity to the Second Amendment spurred some of his most farcical whoppers. In July 2016, Obama asserted: “We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book.” Glocks are the Lexus of handguns, and a person could buy hundreds of volumes of used books via Amazon for the price of a Glock.

A year earlier, Obama bewailed “neighborhoods where it’s easier for you to buy a handgun and clips than it is for you to buy a fresh vegetable.” Obama never offered a single example of a locale where carrots are rarer than .38 Specials. But his false claim helped frighten clueless suburbanites to support Obama’s anti-gun agenda.

The Times column lists only one Obama falsehood on the Affordable Care Act: “If you like your doctor, you'll be able to keep your doctor; if you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan.” Obama’s dozens of variations and recitals of this lie were disregarded. The Times also ignored the fact that the ObamaCare legislation was carefully crafted to con Congress and the public. As its intellectual godfather, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, explained:

“Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically, that was really, really critical to get this thing to pass.”

To revile Trump, the column also struggles mightily to resurrect George W. Bush’s credibility. The Times concedes that Bush sought to justify attacking Iraq “by talking about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, which did not exist.” This vastly understates the role of official deceit in hustling that war.

In early 2003, Bush’s speeches continually warned, “If war is forced upon us....” There was never any truth to war being “forced upon us” (except by the White House) but that phrase helped Bush panic audiences still jittery after 9/11. The Center for Public Integrity, which has won two Pulitzer Prizes, compiled a list of 935 lies by Bush and his top appointees on Iraq. Perhaps to preserve the column’s lofty tone, the Times omitted any mention of Bush’s four years of brazenly false denials of authorizing a worldwide torture regime.

The Times’ comparison of Trump and other presidents implies that all lies are equally damnable. The Times ignored all the Obama false promises used to justify his troop surge in Afghanistan (which resulted in more than a thousand dead American troops with nothing to show for the sacrifice) and bombing Libya (which now has slave markets). But killing vast numbers of human beings should require more due diligence than assertions on federal spending for peanut subsidies.

The Times asserts that Trump is seeking to “to make truth irrelevant,” which “is extremely damaging to democracy.” But democracy has also been subverted by the media’s long history of ignoring or absolving presidential lies. For more than a century, the press has groveled the worst when presidents dragged the nation into the biggest perils.

Trump’s lies deserve to be exposed and condemned. But Bush’s and Obama’s lies help explain why only 20 percent of Americans trusted the federal government at the end of Obama’s reign. Pretending America recently had a Golden Age of honest politicians encourages the delusion that toppling Trump is all that is necessary to make the federal government great again.

-------------------------------------------------------------


1,375 well sourced examples of Barack Obama’s lies, lawbreaking, corruption, cronyism, hypocrisy, waste, etc. Kindle Edition

Mattis Resigns as Defense Chief, Citing Differences With Trump

Tony Capaccio 10 mins ago
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(Bloomberg) -- Defense Secretary Jim Mattis announced his resignation on Thursday, citing differences over policy with Donald Trump, a day after the president abruptly called for the withdrawal of American forces from Syria.

In a two-page letter to the president, Mattis laid out his convictions on the value of U.S. leadership in strategic alliances, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the 74-nation coalition to defeat Islamic State.

[Click here to read a letter from Secretary Mattis]
https://assets.bwbx.io/documents/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/r1s3MmEom1_8/v0

“Because you have the right to have a Secretary of Defense whose views are better aligned with yours on these and other subjects, I believe it is right for me to step down from my position,” Mattis said in the letter to Trump released by the Pentagon.

Moments earlier, Trump announced the news on Twitter, saying that Mattis would be the latest senior official to leave his Cabinet and that the former Marine general would be “retiring, with distinction, at the end of February, after having served my Administration as Secretary of Defense for the past two years.” Trump said he would name a new Pentagon chief “shortly.”

Mattis was one of Trump’s first cabinet picks after the 2016 election. He was long seen as a force for stability in foreign policy in an administration that has had to manage crises from North Korea to Syria under a president who prides himself on his unpredictability. But like other senior national security advisers, he was believed to have pushed back on Trump’s decision this week to abruptly withdraw American troops from Syria.

After Trump said he’d nominate Mattis for the top Pentagon job, the late Senator John McCain hailed him as “one of the finest military officers of his generation and an extraordinary leader who inspires a rare and special admiration of his troops.” Short and wiry with a brush-cut haircut, Mattis was known as the “Warrior Monk” and sometimes as “Mad Dog,” a nickname he disliked as much as Trump loved invoking it.

At the Pentagon, he followed a succession of defense chiefs -- Ash Carter, Chuck Hagel and Leon Panetta -- who each lasted about two years in office.

Defense Spending Surge
Beyond his reputation as a voice for stability in military and foreign policy, Mattis may be best-remembered for overseeing a surge in defense spending. The fiscal year 2019 military budget of more than $715 billion bore his imprint and was seen as fulfillment of a key campaign pledge by Trump, ramping up spending for weapons systems including Lockheed Martin Corp.’s F-35 jet and new aircraft carriers built by Huntington Ingalls Inc.

“He managed to secure large budget increases for the Pentagon while simultaneously dissuading the president from withdrawing troops from the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, as he advocated during his campaign, and in fact convinced him to step up efforts in these areas,” said Rob Levinson, a defense analyst with Bloomberg Government. “He sought to increase the Pentagon’s ‘lethality’ and tame its sprawling bureaucracy and associated costs, but the jury is still out on whether these efforts have made any real difference.”

Mattis found himself on the defensive after excerpts from author Bob Woodward’s book “Fear,” published in early September, painted the publicly taciturn Pentagon secretary as critical in private of the commander-in-chief.

According to Woodward, Mattis pushed back early in 2018 when Trump questioned the massive U.S. military presence on the Korean peninsula, asking why the U.S. was spending so much.

‘World War III’
“We’re doing this in order to prevent World War III,” Mattis said, according to the book. He went on to tell associates that the president had the understanding of a “fifth or sixth-grader,” according to Woodward. It also quoted the secretary as saying that defense chiefs “don’t always get to choose the president they work for.”

Mattis was one of the first top administration officials to deny the book’s claims.

"The contemptuous words about the President attributed to me in Woodward’s book were never uttered by me or in my presence,” Mattis said in a Sept. 4 statement. “While I generally enjoy reading fiction, this is a uniquely Washington brand of literature, and his anonymous sources do not lend credibility.”

But Trump’s most direct public criticism of Mattis followed the book’s revelations.

“I think he’s sort of a Democrat, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said in an interview on “60 Minutes” in October. “He may leave. I mean, at some point, everybody leaves. Everybody. People leave. That’s Washington.”

He walked that back a bit in November, telling reporters who asked if would remove Mattis after the midterm election, “no.”

Mattis was a defense secretary of few words in public. Asked in a May 2017 interview on CBS News about what keeps him up at night, Mattis responded “Nothing. I keep other people awake.”

But he occasionally let slip an intemperate remark during his military career. In 2005 during a speech in San Diego, Mattis was quoted as saying it was “fun to shoot some people,” that “it’s a lot of fun to fight,” and “it’s a hell of a hoot.”

Even before he took charge of the Pentagon, Mattis and Trump were in sync in their views on Iran. Mattis called the Iran nuclear deal reached under President Barack Obama “an arms control agreement that fell short” and labeled the regime in Tehran “the single most enduring threat to stability and peace in the Middle East.”

Mattis wasn’t always in lockstep with Trump. Like other foreign policy officials in the Trump administration, he spoke out against Russia’s meddling in the 2016 campaign and its actions in Syria and Ukraine. The National Defense Strategy published during Mattis’s tenure sought to focus U.S. strategy toward “great power” relations with Russia and China, putting less emphasis on the fight against terrorism that came to dominate U.S. thinking after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

In an administration infamous for leaks and turmoil, Mattis’s reticence to create controversy generated extra scrutiny the few times he appeared to subtly criticize the political climate in the U.S.

In August 2017, video surfaced of Mattis telling troops in Jordan that the U.S. “has problems that we don’t have in the military. Just hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other.”

Trump credited the blunt-talking Mattis with getting him to rethink his campaign pledge to revive waterboarding, an interrogation tactic used against suspected terrorists that Obama had banned. “He said, ‘I’ve always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I’ll do better,”’ the president-elect recounted to the New York Times.

Mattis retired from the military in 2013 after a 41-year career in the Marines that took him from rifleman to head of U.S. Central Command.

A native of Pullman, Washington, Mattis had more than 30 years’ experience in the Middle East, where he first deployed in 1979 as an infantry company commander. Later he led the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s transformation office and rewrote -- along with Army General David Petraeus -- the military’s counterinsurgency field manual. He was one of few military officers who identified U.S. economic debt as a national security issue.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Bill Faries at wfaries@bloomberg.net, Michael Shepard

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