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Trump’s Syria pullout shakes up US Mideast policy

The US president’s snap decision to withdraw 2,200 US troops from Syria will have an impact across the region.
U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis listens as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the news media while gathering for a briefing from his senior military leaders in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., October 23, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis - RC1C2E1A2820

The Donald Trump administration’s snap decision to withdraw 2,200 US troops from the battlefield in Syria today came from a familiar source: the president himself.

We have defeated [the Islamic State] in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,” Trump wrote in a morning tweet just hours after the Wall Street Journal first reported the news.

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