President Donald Trump is racking up foreign policy victories as he refines his close working relationship with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and makes bold diplomatic moves around the globe.
Trump announced Thursday that five ISIS leaders have been captured.
CBS News reports: “The ISIS officials were captured in a joint operation carried about by American and Iraqi intelligence, according to The New York Times. The paper reports that the operation began after Turkish authorities arrested a top aide to ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in February and extradited him to Iraq. After being interrogated by American and Iraqi intelligence agents, the ISIS official lured four other leaders of the terror group across the Iraqi border, where they were arrested. The ISIS leaders who were apprehended do not include al-Baghdadi, a senior U.S. official confirmed to CBS News’ Margaret Brennan. The self-styled caliph is still at large and believed to be hiding in the cross border area between Iraq and Syria. Intelligence gleaned from the interrogations of the ISIS official arrested by the Turks, who is identified by the Times as Ismail Alwaan al-Ithawi, also led to an April U.S. airstrike that killed 39 suspected ISIS members.”
President Trump has waged all-out war against ISIS, especially in the Syria region, without bowing to the requests of his foreign policy advisers to stage a ground invasion of Iraq and Syria that would have deployed 100,000 troops according to one plan that Trump shot down.
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Trump has been on the forefront of defeating ISIS and also acknowledging the reality of ISIS, declaring Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to be the co-founders of ISIS during the campaign. Internal memos delivered to the State Department confirm that the Obama administration was actively supporting al Qaeda in Iraq, which turned into ISIS.
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