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Groton Daily Independent
Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 053 ~ 24 of 45
crucial to countering a clear threat from Pyongyang.
6. TRUMP REBUFFS COAL INDUSTRY; CEO CLAIMS PROMISE BROKEN
The White House rejects a coal industry push to issue a rarely used emergency order protecting coal-
red power plants.
7. PHILLY AREA TRAIN CRASH INJURES DOZENS
A regional train crashes into an unoccupied, parked train in Upper Darby, injuring 42 people — but none
of the injuries are life-threatening, a SEPTA spokeswoman says.
8. HOW CIVIL WAR LESSONS VARY
American schools presenting accounts of the 1860s con ict vary from state to state and even district
to district.
9. DENVER SOON TO LICENSE POT CLUBS
But the elaborate hurdles for potential weed-friendly coffee shops and gathering places may mean Colo-
rado’s largest city gets few takers.
10. MAYWEATHER-McGREGOR A HIT IN VEGAS
Sin City’s nightclubs have booked a long list of celebrities, and high-rolling gamblers and VIPs have
snagged some of the most luxurious accommodations in town.
Mattis: IS militants caught in Iraq-Syria military vise By ROBERT BURNS, AP National Security Writer
BAGHDAD (AP) — Expelled from their main stronghold in northern Iraq, Islamic State militants are now trapped in a military vise that will squeeze them on both sides of the Syria-Iraq border, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said.
Mattis arrived in the Iraqi capital on an unannounced visit Tuesday just hours after President Donald Trump outlined a fresh approach to the stalemated war in Afghanistan. Trump also has vowed to take a more aggressive, effective approach against IS in Iraq and Syria, but he has yet to unveil a strategy for that con ict that differs greatly from his predecessor’s.
In Baghdad, Mattis was meeting with senior Iraqi government leaders and with U.S. commanders. He also planned to meet in Irbil with Massoud Barzani, leader of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region that has helped ght IS. Mattis told reporters before departing from neighboring Jordan that the so-called Middle Euphrates River Valley -- roughly from the western Iraqi city of al-Qaim to the eastern Syrian city of Der el-Zour — will be liberated in time, as IS gets hit from both ends of the valley that bisects Iraq and Syria.
“You see, ISIS is now caught in-between converging forces,” he said, using an alternative acronym for the militant group that burst into western and northern Iraq in 2014 from Syria and held sway for more than two years. “So ISIS’s days are certainly numbered, but it’s not over yet and it’s not going to be over any time soon.”
Mattis referred to this area as “ISIS’s last stand.”
Unlike the war in Afghanistan, Iraq offers a more positive narrative for the White House, at least for now. Having enabled Iraqi government forces to reclaim the Islamic State’s prized possession of Mosul in July, the U.S. military effort is showing tangible progress and the Pentagon can credibly assert that momentum is on Iraq’s side.
The ranking U.S. Air Force of cer in Iraq, Brig. Gen. Andrew A. Croft, said that over the past couple of months IS has lost much of its ability to command and control its forces.
“It’s less coordinated than it was before,” he said. “It appears more fractured -- imsy is the word I would use.”
Brett McGurk, the administration’s special envoy to the counter-IS coalition, credits the Trump administra- tion for having accelerated gains against the militants. He said Monday that about one-third of all territory regained in Iraq and Syria since 2014 has been retaken in the last six or seven months.
“I think that’s quite signi cant and partially due to the fact we’re moving faster, more effectively,” as a result of Trump’s delegation of battle eld authorities to commanders in the eld, McGurk said. He said this