Republicans savaged President Donald Trump Wednesday for allowing Turkey to attack US allies in Syria as the President offered varying reasons for giving Turkey the green light, including the fact that Kurds did not fight alongside the US in World War II.
Turkey launched its military operation to flush Kurds allied with the US out of northeastern Syria sparking outrage in Congress, creating rare bipartisan unity about the risks to the Kurds, US national security interests, regional stability and the fight against ISIS.
Trump apparently gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the go-ahead on Sunday to proceed with his long-planned move against Kurdish fighters who make up part of the Syrian Defense Forces and who lost thousands of men fighting with the US against ISIS.
As Turkish planes pounded Kurdish positions from the air and with artillery, CNN reporters on the ground in Syria reported smoke billowing from several large explosions as desperate civilians — women, children and men — fled the area on foot, some pushing others in wheelchairs, many crammed into the back of pickup trucks.
With humanitarian groups reporting the bombardment could displace as many as 300,000 people, Erdogan’s top adviser told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that Trump knew in advance about the scope of the Turkish attack.
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Article URL : https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/09/politics/turkey-syria-us-anger-ramifications/index.html