WASHINGTON — In a campaign that spanned five years and two U.S. presidencies, unleashed more than 100,000 bombs and killed untold numbers of civilians, the U.S. military engineered the destruction of the Islamic State group's self-proclaimed empire in Iraq and Syria.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday flashed a colour -coded map to illustrate what he called the imminent demise of IS in its last speck of Syrian territory. At its peak, in 2014-15, it controlled an area the size of Britain across Syria and Iraq and launched a series of extremist attacks around the world.
Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies, a conservative-leaning research institute, tweeted that the remaining IS presence in Iraq and Syria shows that it is not defeated.
When the U.S. military began its counter-IS campaign it focused mainly on Iraq, in part because Baghdad itself seemed in danger. The going was slow, and in May 2015 the whole effort appeared in doubt when Iraqi defenders were routed at Ramadi. The U.S. defence secretary at the time, Ash Carter, questioned the Iraqis' will to fight, but gradually the tide began to turn in their favour .
This story has been corrected to show Sessions' political party was R, not D.