The Pentagon made a muddle of troop numbers in the Middle East. According to Washington, there are 5,200 US troops in Iraq and about 2,000 in Syria. These figures were announced by Pentagon spokesman Rob Manning. Although, recently only 500 US troops were claimed to have been committed to Syria.
In early November, James Jarrard, head of the US special operations task force against terrorists said that there were 4,000 US troops in Syria.
The American media hastened to report that such confusion may be due to the fact that the ground troops weren't always included in the calculations and reminded that earlier the US President Donald Trump had forbidden publication of the exact number of American troops in the Middle East.
And then the Pentagon disagreed with the statement of the Russian Defense Ministry about the destruction of IS (banned in the Russian Federation) in Syria. The representative of the agency said that it was too early to speak about victory over terrorists.
The response of the Russian Ministry of Defense was brief: the Pentagon's non-involvement led to the rise of terrorists in Iraq and Syria. It was Russia who put an end to it. That's why the USA doesn't want to admit Russia's victory and doesn't notice that in Iraq, where there are more US troops, the terrorists are still not defeated.
