President Donald Trump may have announced the complete withdraw of U.S. military forces in Syria as part of a multi-billion dollar arms sale to Turkey, a former four-star general explained on MSNBC's "Deadline: White House" on Wednesday.
"Donald Trump today defying the advice of his top military advisers and ordering a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, creating a power vacuum likely to be filled by Russia, among others, in a part of the world decidedly zero-sum," anchor Nicolle Wallace reported. "Today's decision will cheer ISIS, Moscow and Iran."
Wallace broke down the chaos in the administration and among allies by the decision, which Trump announced in a tweet on Wednesday morning.
"So to recap for everybody: Pentagon, not happy. Putin, so happy," Wallace explained.
Retired four-star U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey said the tweet was, "clearly good news for the Iranians, for Hezbollah, for the Russians and most importantly for [Syrian President Bashar] al-Assad, who will now see a chance to finish them off."
McCaffrey offered his speculation on what was behind the decision.
"It looks as if it was cooked up essentially one-on-one between [Turkish President Recep] Erdoğan and Mr. Trump, in which he says, look, the Turks are buying a bunch of our military equipment and he ceded the battlefield," he suggested.
On Tuesday, Reuters reported the U.S. State Department approved a possible $3.5 billion sale of missiles to Turkey.
"The Defense Security Cooperation Agency said the State Department had approved the sale of 80 Patriot guidance-enhanced missiles and 60 other missiles to Ankara along with related equipment, including radar sets, engagement control stations and launching stations," Reuters explained.
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