[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 201 (Thursday, December 20, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7963-S7964]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 SYRIA

  Mr. NELSON. Madam President, Syria has been a mess and a concern for 
quite a number of years. By putting in a small footprint now of a 
little over 2,000 special operations troops, the United States has been 
considerably successful when you think of what a chaotic place it was 
and still is and that it was especially inimical to the interests of 
the United States just a

[[Page S7964]]

few years ago. Remember the horrible images of U.S. citizens being 
executed by ISIS. Remember all of the trauma we have seen the Syrian 
Government perpetrate on its own people.
  Remember the successful efforts of a combination of forces that 
ultimately took on ISIS, that removed it from its headquarters of its 
caliphate and caused it to disperse if it were not eliminated at the 
time. A lot of that was led with Kurdish fighters who were fighting 
alongside U.S. special operations advisers. Even though complicated 
because of the Russians' being there and the Turks' having interests 
and Assad's trying to hang on to power, the United States has been 
successful in not eliminating but in lessening the influence of ISIS.
  Then came the shocker--the shocker of the President's announcing 
unilaterally that, all of a sudden, he was going to pull the special 
operations troops, as advisers, out of Syria. This would likely cause 
immediate instability. It would certainly allow for ISIS to reconstruct 
itself, and it would cause chaos with the Kurdish troops who fought 
alongside the Americans, with the Turkish Government's going after a 
number of them.
  This is an ill-advised and probably a non-advised decision by the 
President, and it should be reversed. This Senator calls on all of the 
national defense, national security, and national intelligence 
professionals who are within the administration to get the President to 
reverse this unilateral decision that he has made. Otherwise, U.S. 
interests are going to be ill-served.

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