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Pentagon Claims ISIS Hasn’t Won A ‘Strategic Victory’ In A Year

REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani

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Saagar Enjeti White House Correspondent
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A Pentagon spokesman claimed Tuesday that Islamic State has not had a “strategic victory” in over a year. The Pentagon often defines success against ISIS in terms of its territorial control in its core terrain of the Middle East.

Jeff Davis’s remarks come just two weeks after the latest terror attack in Orlando, and months after two ISIS-inspired terrorists gunned down 15 in San Bernardino, California. Davis based his claims on ISIS’s loss of territory in Iraq and Syria.

In the so-called losing year for ISIS, the terrorist group carried out thousands of attacks across the Middle East, Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. ISIS militants trained in Iraq and Syria gunned down 130 Parisians while they enjoyed a Friday night last November. A few months later, the terrorist group killed 32 and injured over 300 across the city of Brussels.

ISIS’s affiliates continue to wreak havoc across the globe, swelling to nearly 7,000 in Libya, and bringing down a Russian airliner in the Egyptian Sinai peninsula. The terrorist group’s affiliate is reportedly surging in Afghanistan, and recently declared new chapters in Bangladesh and the Philippines. Despite the supposed lack of “strategic victory,” the terrorist group has superseded al-Qaida in the global jihad movement and the administration itself admits ISIS will be a menace for years to come.

When Congress asked President Barack Obama’s own nominee take over all U.S. military operations in Africa if there was any strategy to deal with the largest affiliate in Libya, he replied, “I am not aware of any overall grand strategy at this point.”

ISIS still holds major cities across major command and control networks across major cities in Iraq and Syria. ISIS only needs an internet connection in any of the many cities it controls to distribute its global propaganda that inspired the attacks in Chattanooga, San Bernadino, and Orlando.

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