Defense One: Outgoing Syria Envoy Admits Hiding US Troop Numbers; Praises Trump’s Mideast RecordAsked about what Milley said re: 500-600 troops in Syria.
— Alex Ward (@AlexWardVox) November 13, 2020
Jeffrey: “That is exactly the range that I heard but you also have a small detachment - very small at at Tanf-but as far as I know everything would not have been much more than Milley said. Also troops went in and out.”
‘We were always playing shell games,’ says Amb. Jim Jeffrey, who also gives advice to President-elect Biden.
Four years after signing the now-infamous “Never Trump” letter condemning then-presidential candidate Donald Trump as a danger to America, retiring diplomat Jim Jeffrey is recommending that the incoming Biden administration stick with Trump’s foreign policy in the Middle East.
But even as he praises the president’s support of what he describes as a successful “realpolitik” approach to the region, he acknowledges that his team routinely misled senior leaders about troop levels in Syria.
“We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” Jeffrey said in an interview. The actual number of troops in northeast Syria is “a lot more than” the roughly two hundred troops Trump initially agreed to leave there in 2019.
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Update #1: Top US official admits lying to Trump on American troop levels in Syria (Task & Purpose) Update #2: Trump’s anti-ISIS envoy admits he MISLED president about US troop numbers in Syria to keep them there (RT)
WNU Editor: Here is an easy prediction. What retiring diplomat Jim Jeffrey is admitting to is probably just the tip of the iceberg. We are probably going to hear even more stories in the coming months on how unelected bureaucrats sabotaged and/or disrupted President Trump's foreign policy initiatives. Especially in conflict zones like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. No wonder the U.S. finds itself in all of these forever wars. How can any President plan and successfully execute a strategy when their own foreign representatives and bureaucracy lie to them.
