-In the Middle East, our brave warriors
have liberated virtually 100% of ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
Now, you don't hear that from these people.
-For months, President Trump has claimed his administration
has defeated ISIS and beaten back the caliphate,
and while they've lost most of the ground that they gained,
the reality of the situation is more complex.
To evaluate where ISIS stands now,
we need to go back to 2010.
-Last 90 days or so, we've either picked up
or killed 34 out of the top 42 Al-Qaeda and Iraq leaders.
-It had, maybe, 700 or so adherents left.
-So, tonight, I am announcing
that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended.
-As the US was pulling forces back,
the Arab Spring came to Syria, sparking a civil war.
The Iraqi government was struggling
with sectarian tensions and a degraded military.
-Let me be clear.
Iraq will be tested in the days ahead by terrorism,
by those who would seek to divide.
By 2010, the Intelligence Community
warned the terrorist organizations
could form an Islamic state in Iraq and Syria.
And that was exactly what came next.
ISIS moved quickly,
gaining territory across Iraq and Syria
and establishing a caliphate.
In June, Obama signed an exploratory mission
to go and assess the threat.
He ordered air strikes in August, and by September,
he'd announced a coalition to defeat ISIS.
-Our objective is clear -- we will degrade
and ultimately destroy ISIL.
-At its peak, the Pentagon estimated
that ISIS controlled over 34,000 square miles
across Iraq and Syria.
Some estimates said they controlled
even more territory than that.
US-backed coalition forces made significant progress
in pushing back ISIS and recapturing key cities.
By the time Trump took office,
Islamic State territory had dropped by about half,
and all Iraqi cities excluding western Mosul
and Northeastern Syria had been liberated.
As of June, 2018, the Islamic State
controlled 14,000 square miles,
and now it controls almost nothing.
The thing that you need to understand here
is that ISIS is a proto-state terrorist network.
The caliphate is a government.
It's something that ISIS created,
and it functioned like any other state --
the US, Syria, Iraq, and like any government,
the caliphate provided courts, religious schools,
and social-welfare services, maintained public order,
and even collected hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.
Remember when the US last withdrew forces?
-Since we were there in Iraq, it had, maybe, 700
or so adherents left.
-Today, reports from the Pentagon,
Inspector General, the United Nations,
and others, suggest that tens of thousands of fighters
remain in Iraq and Syria.
ISIS still has affiliates around the world,
and it's evolving back into a proto-state network
that's able to execute acts of terrorism around the world.
-While we have defeated the caliphate,
with a couple of little villages left,
we should not underestimate the, um,
ability of terrorist groups, particularly ISIS.
-It is, uh, of course, accurate
that ISIS has suffered significant leadership
losses and near, uh, total loss of territorial control,
but, of course, they're still dangerous,
and they still command thousands of fighters in Iraq and Syria.
-In Iraq, the underlying political and economic factors
that facilitated the rise of ISIS persist.
-In comparison to the last time US forces withdrew
and ISIS gained power,
the situation is eerily similar, if not arguably worse.
No matter how you look at it, the caliphate may be gone,
but ISIS remains.
-The President has been, I think,
as clear as clear can be when he talks about the defeat
of the ISIS territorial caliphate.
He has never said that the elimination of the territorial
caliphate means the end of ISIS in total.
We -- We know that's not...
-And we have won against ISIS.
We've beaten them, and we've beaten them badly.
We've taken back the land.