American troops are leaving Syria after a surprise announcement from the White House Wednesday.

President Donald Trump believes US troops do not need to stay in Syria any longer. He tweeted, "We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump presidency."

His statement appeared to catch much of official Washington by surprise, leading one of his most ardent supporters, Sen. Lindsey Graham, to call it an "Obama-like mistake."

It is, however, a campaign promise that the president has continued to talk about.

"We'll be coming out of Syria like very soon. Let the other people take care of it now. Very soon," Trump said.

But Chief Department of Defense spokesperson Dana W. White cautioned that the fight is not over.

"The Coalition has liberated the ISIS-held territory, but the campaign against ISIS is not over. We have started the process of returning US troops home from Syria as we transition to the next phase of the campaign," White said. "We will continue working with our partners and allies to defeat ISIS wherever it operates."

White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders echoed that statement saying, "Five years ago, ISIS was a very powerful and dangerous force in the Middle East, and now the United States has defeated the territorial caliphate."

"These victories over ISIS in Syria do not signal the end of the Global Coalition or its campaign. We have started returning United States troops home as we transition to the next phase of this campaign. The United States and our allies stand ready to re-engage at all levels to defend American interests whenever necessary, and we will continue to work together to deny radical Islamist terrorists territory, funding, support, and any means of infiltrating our borders," Sanders said.

Roughly 2,000 service members are believed to have been operating in Syria. The US got involved in that war-torn country back in 2014, launching airstrikes there.

Since then, US troops started partnering with Syrian ground forces to fight ISIS terrorists.

The Pentagon recently said ISIS now only controls just one percent of the territory it originally held during the Syrian civil war.</s>The Trump administration will withdraw all of the approximately 2,000 American troops in Syria, according to a U.S. official, as the White House declared victory Wednesday in the mission to defeat Islamic State militants there.

Planning for the pullout has begun and troops will begin leaving as soon as possible, said the official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss military planning and spoke on condition of anonymity. President Donald Trump said American forces no longer were needed in a country torn apart by long-running civil war.

Trump has said since he was a presidential candidate that he wanted to bring back troops from the Middle East. But officials have said in recent weeks that pockets of IS militants remain. U.S. policy has been that American forces would stay in place until the extremists were eradicated.

In addition, Pentagon and other officials have said that U.S. troops were countering Iran-backed militants in Syria, which was an expansion of the U.S. mission.

Trump said on Twitter: “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”

His tweet followed a series of news reports that the U.S. was preparing to withdraw its troops from Syria. The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Reports of an abrupt withdrawal drew quick criticism from Congress. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said a full and rapid removal of troops would be a “grave error with broader implications” beyond the fight against IS.

Responding to the reports, Pentagon spokesman Col. Rob Manning said in a statement that “at this time, we continue to work by, with and through our partners in the region.”

The U.S. first launched airstrikes against IS fighters in Syria in 2014. In the years that followed, the U.S. began partnering with Syrian ground forces to fight the extremists.

The Pentagon recently said that IS now controls just 1 per cent of the territory they originally held.</s>WASHINGTON — The Trump administration will withdraw all of the approximately 2,000 American troops in Syria, according to a U.S. official, as the White House declared victory Wednesday in the mission to defeat Islamic State militants there.

Planning for the pullout has begun and troops will begin leaving as soon as possible, said the official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss military planning and spoke on condition of anonymity. President Donald Trump said American forces no longer were needed in a country torn apart by long-running civil war.

Trump has said since he was a presidential candidate that he wanted to bring back troops from the Middle East. But officials have said in recent weeks that pockets of IS militants remain. U.S. policy has been that American forces would stay in place until the extremists were eradicated.

In addition, Pentagon and other officials have said that U.S. troops were countering Iran-backed militants in Syria, which was an expansion of the U.S. mission.

Trump said on Twitter: “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”

His tweet followed a series of news reports that the U.S. was preparing to withdraw its troops from Syria. The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Reports of an abrupt withdrawal drew quick criticism from Congress. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said a full and rapid removal of troops would be a “grave error with broader implications” beyond the fight against IS.

Responding to the reports, Pentagon spokesman Col. Rob Manning said in a statement that “at this time, we continue to work by, with and through our partners in the region.”

The U.S. first launched airstrikes against IS fighters in Syria in 2014. In the years that followed, the U.S. began partnering with Syrian ground forces to fight the extremists.

The Pentagon recently said that IS now controls just 1 percent of the territory they originally held.</s>A decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria creates prospects for a political settlement of the crisis there, TASS news agency reported the Russian Foreign Ministry as saying on Wednesday.

The United States said it had begun withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria as U.S. officials said Washington was considering pulling out all its troops as it winds up its campaign to retake territory once held by Islamic State.

TASS also cited the ministry as saying that an initiative to form a Syrian constitutional committee had a bright future with the U.S. troop withdrawal.</s>WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said Wednesday it had started the process of returning U.S. troops from Syria as the United States began to transition into the next phase of the campaign.

“The Coalition has liberated the ISIS-held territory, but the campaign against ISIS is not over,” Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in a statement, using an acronym for Islamic State.

“We have started the process of returning U.S. troops home from Syria as we transition to the next phase of the campaign,” she said.

“For force protection and operational security reasons we will not provide further details. We will continue working with our partners and allies to defeat ISIS wherever it operates.”</s>The White House announced Wednesday that it has begun withdrawing U.S. troops from from Syria as military officials “transition to the next phase” of the Middle East conflict.

Contending that the United States has defeated the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS, territorial caliphate, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said the Trump administration has “started returning United States troops home as we transition to the next phase of this campaign.”

She, however, stressed that “these victories over ISIS in Syria do not signal the end of the Global Coalition or its campaign,” and offered that the United States and its allies stand ready to “re-engage at all levels to defend American interests whenever necessary.”

“We will continue to work together to deny radical Islamist terrorists territory, funding, support and any means of infiltrating our borders,” she added in a statement.

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, hinted at the troop withdrawal on Twitter.

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

Trump and Sanders' comments came shortly after several news outlets reported that the White House had ordered the Pentagon to remove all 2,000 American troops from Syria and to end its ISIS ground campaign.

Despite the president’s assertion, defense officials suggested their work in Syria may not be over yet, according to reports.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Rob Manning told CBS News that “at this time, we continue to work by, with and through our partners in the region."

U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a U.S. Air Force veteran and member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, meanwhile, rejected Trump’s claim that ISIS has been defeated in Syria.

“This is simply not true,” he tweeted in response to the president.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.</s>MOSCOW (Reuters) - A decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria creates prospects for a political settlement of the crisis there, TASS news agency reported the Russian Foreign Ministry as saying on Wednesday.

The United States said it had begun withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria as U.S. officials said Washington was considering pulling out all its troops as it winds up its campaign to retake territory once held by Islamic State.

TASS also cited the ministry as saying that an initiative to form a Syrian constitutional committee had a bright future with the U.S. troop withdrawal.</s>The White House said Wednesday the United States has begun withdrawing troops from Syria, shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted the U.S. has defeated the Islamic State terror group there.

"We have started returning United States troops home as we transition to the next phase of this campaign," White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

She added the defeat of IS does not mean the military campaign by coalition forces is ending in Syria.

"The United States and our allies stand ready to re-engage at all levels to defend American interests whenever necessary, and we will continue to work together to deny radical Islamist terrorists territory, funding, support, and any means of infiltrating our borders," Sanders said.

Later on Wednesday, Pentagon spokesperson Dana White said in a statement that "the coalition has liberated ISIS-held territory, but the campaign against ISIS is not over." ISIS an acronym for the Islamic State terror group.

"We will continue working with our partners and allies to defeat ISIS wherever it operates," she said, giving no details as to a timeline, noting "force protection and operational security reasons."

Just last week, U.S. special presidential envoy for the global coalition to defeat ISIS, Brett McGurk, told reporters at the State Department that liberating the last one percent of IS-held territory could take "a period of months."

"There is a significant concentration of the most hardened ISIS fighters in that little splotch of territory," McGurk said on December 11. "A couple of thousand hardened fighters remain in that area."

Pentagon estimates from August of this year warned IS still had at least 13,000 fighters in Syria, where the caliphate had already collapsed.

A withdrawal of the troops would mark a sudden reversal in U.S. military strategy in the region. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and other senior U.S. officials have been advocating for a longer-term military presence in Syria to help ensureIS cannot reemerge as a force in the Middle East.The U.S. has about 2,000 troops in Syria, many of whom work closely with an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias known as the Syrian Democratic Forces.

Despite the Pentagon's preference for an ongoing military presence in the war-torn country, Trump has said he wanted to bring the troops home when possible.

Reuters quoted a U.S. official as sayingthe State Department is evacuating all personnel from Syria over the next 24 hours and that the time frame for the troop withdrawal is 60 to 100 days.

Lawmakers weighed on Wednesday's announcement of the U.S. withdrawal from Syria, with Senate Armed Services Committee member Lindsey Graham tweeting, "Withdrawal of this small American force in Syria would be a huge Obama-like mistake."

Former President Barack Obama drew the ire of Trump for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq before Iraqi forces collapsed at the hands of IS in 2014.

Sen. Rand Paul, a member of the chamber's Committee on Foreign Relations, praised the move on Twitter.

Harry Kazianis, a defense expert with the Washington-based think-tank Center for the National Interest, said the Trump decision should not be seen as a shock.

"In fact, with President Trump promising to the American people he would act only in the national interest— and that U.S. forces have accomplished their objective to defeat the Islamic State — there was no reason for them to stay any longer," Kazianis said.

Mattis and State Department officials have expressed concern about leaving Syria before a peace agreement is reached to end the civil war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced about half of Syria's pre-war population of about 22 million people.

The withdrawal of U.S. troops comes as the U.S. approaches an end of a coalition campaign to recapture territory once controlled by IS.

While an alliance military campaign has defeated IS in Syria, the defeat has angered Turkey, a NATO ally, which is threatening a new offensive in Syria. Turkey considers the Kurdish forces in the alliance an extension of a militant group fighting inside Turkey.

A total pullout of U.S. troops from Syria would still leave the U.S. military with a sizable presence in the region, including more than 5,000 troops in neighboring Iraq.</s>MOSCOW (Reuters) - A decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria creates prospects for a political settlement of the crisis there, TASS news agency reported the Russian Foreign Ministry as saying on Wednesday.

The United States said it had begun withdrawing U.S. forces from Syria as U.S. officials said Washington was considering pulling out all its troops as it winds up its campaign to retake territory once held by Islamic State.

TASS also cited the ministry as saying that an initiative to form a Syrian constitutional committee had a bright future with the U.S. troop withdrawal.</s>WASHINGTON — The Trump administration will withdraw all of the approximately 2,000 American troops in Syria, according to a U.S. official, as the White House declared victory Wednesday in the mission to defeat Islamic State militants there.

Planning for the pullout has begun and troops will begin leaving as soon as possible, said the official, who was not authorized to publicly discuss military planning and spoke on condition of anonymity.

President Donald Trump said American forces no longer were needed in a country torn apart by long-running civil war.

Trump has said since he was a presidential candidate that he wanted to bring back troops from the Middle East.

But officials have said in recent weeks that pockets of IS militants remain. U.S. policy has been that American forces would stay in place until the extremists were eradicated.

In addition, Pentagon and other officials have said that U.S. troops were countering Iran-backed militants in Syria, which was an expansion of the U.S. mission.

Trump said on Twitter: “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”

His tweet followed a series of news reports that the U.S. was preparing to withdraw its troops from Syria.

Reports of an abrupt withdrawal drew quick criticism from Congress. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said a full and rapid removal of troops would be a “grave error with broader implications” beyond the fight against IS.

Responding to the reports, Pentagon spokesman Col. Rob Manning said in a statement that “at this time, we continue to work by, with and through our partners in the region.”

The U.S. first launched airstrikes against IS fighters in Syria in 2014. In the years that followed, the U.S. began partnering with Syrian ground forces to fight the extremists.

The Pentagon recently said that IS now controls just 1 percent of the territory they originally held.
The Pentagon reports it has begun withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria, with a spokesperson saying that the coalition has liberated ISIL-held territory but also that the campaign is not over.