{"id":198452,"date":"2019-01-20T03:31:56","date_gmt":"2019-01-20T08:31:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=198452"},"modified":"2019-01-20T03:31:56","modified_gmt":"2019-01-20T08:31:56","slug":"trump-salutes-remains-of-4-americans-killed-in-syria-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/01\/20\/trump-salutes-remains-of-4-americans-killed-in-syria-attack\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump salutes remains of 4 Americans killed in Syria attack"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
The president stood solemnly and saluted the remains of civilian Scott A. Wirtz of St. Louis, Missouri, as his body was carried from a C-17 military aircraft into a waiting van on a bitterly cold, wind-whipped tarmac. (File Photo<\/a>: Donald J. Trump\/Facebook)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. \u2014 A solemn procession. A long salute. A chaplain’s prayer.<\/p>\n

President Donald\u00a0Trump\u00a0travelled to Delaware’s Dover Air Force Base on Saturday to pay his respects to the returning remains of four Americans who were killed this week in a suicide bomb attack in Syria.<\/p>\n

The bombing, which was the deadliest assault on U.S. troops in Syria since American forces moved into the country in 2015, came as\u00a0Trump\u00a0prepares to pull U.S. troops out of Syria. And it underscored the threat still posed by Islamic State militants, even as\u00a0Trump\u00a0has claimed the group’s defeat.<\/p>\n

The president stood solemnly and saluted the remains of civilian Scott A. Wirtz of St. Louis, Missouri, as his body was carried from a C-17 military aircraft into a waiting van on a bitterly cold, wind-whipped tarmac.<\/p>\n

Earlier, he, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and acting Secretary of Defence Patrick Shanahan accompanied a small group of Army and Navy officers as they walked up the plane’s cargo ramp, where a chaplain said a prayer.<\/p>\n

Wirtz and the three other Americans \u2014 Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Jonathan R. Farmer, Navy Chief Cryptologic Technician (Interpretive) Shannon M. Kent and an unnamed civilian contractor \u2014 were killed in a suicide bombing Wednesday in the northern Syrian town of Manbij. Wirtz had been assigned to the Defence Intelligence Agency as an operations support specialist.<\/p>\n

The three other transfers were conducted privately, with the president observing. He also spent time with the families of those killed.<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0told reporters as he left the White House on Saturday that meeting the relatives of the country’s fallen heroes \u201cmight be the toughest thing\u201d he has to do as president. In discussing his withdrawal decision,\u00a0Trump\u00a0has repeatedly referenced how much he dislikes making calls and writing letters to the families of those killed while serving overseas.<\/p>\n

The trip was not listed on the president’s public schedule that was released Friday night, but he tweeted the news in the morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWill be leaving for Dover to be with the families of 4 very special people who lost their lives in service to our Country!\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

The visit came during a budget fight that has consumed Washington for the past month, shuttering parts of the federal government and leaving hundreds of thousands of workers without pay. Raising the stakes in his dispute with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the president on Thursday abruptly cancelled her military flight, hours before she and a congressional delegation were to depart for Afghanistan on a previously undisclosed visit to U.S. troops.<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0delivered a speech later Saturday in which he offered to extend temporary protections for young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children in exchange for billions for his long-stalled border wall. But while\u00a0Trump\u00a0cast the move as a \u201ccommon-sense compromise,\u201d Democrats were quick to dismiss it at a \u201cnon-starter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0has made one other visit to Dover during his presidency, soon after taking office. On Feb. 1, 2017,\u00a0Trump\u00a0honoured the returning remains of a U.S. Navy SEAL killed in a raid in Yemen. Chief Special Warfare Operator William \u201cRyan\u201d Owens, a 36-year-old from Peoria, Illinois, was the first known U.S. combat casualty of\u00a0Trump’s presidency.<\/p>\n

In a Dec. 19 tweet announcing the withdrawal from Syria,\u00a0Trump\u00a0declared, \u201cWe have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the\u00a0Trump\u00a0Presidency.\u201d He said the troops would begin coming home \u201cnow.\u201d That plan triggered immediate pushback from military leaders and led to the resignation of Defence Secretary Jim Mattis.<\/p>\n

Over the past month,\u00a0Trump\u00a0and others have appeared to adjust the timeline, and U.S. officials have suggested it will likely take several months to safely withdraw the approximately 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria.<\/p>\n

A leading U.S. voice on foreign policy and close ally of the president, Sen. Lindsey Graham, said during a visit Saturday to Turkey that an American withdrawal from Syria that had not been thought through would lead to \u201cchaos\u201d and \u201can Iraq on steroids.\u201d Graham, R-S.C., urged\u00a0Trump\u00a0not to get out without a plan and said the goal of destroying Islamic State militants in Syria had not yet been accomplished.<\/p>\n

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s attack in Manbij, which killed 19 people, including the four Americans.<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0said before arriving in Dover that IS has lost almost all its territory but \u201cthat doesn’t mean you’re not going to have somebody around.\u201d He also said \u201cwe can be pulling back but we’ve been hitting ISIS very hard over the last three weeks … and it’s moving along very well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Manbij is the main town on the westernmost edge of Syrian territory held by the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurds, running along the border with Turkey. Mixed Kurdish-Arab Syrian forces liberated Manbij from IS in 2016 with help from the U.S.-led coalition.<\/p>\n

But Kurdish control of the town infuriated Turkey, which views the main U.S. Kurdish ally, the YPG militia, as \u201cterrorists\u201d linked to Kurdish insurgents on its own soil.<\/p>\n

Trump\u00a0reinforced his withdrawal decision during a meeting with about a half-dozen GOP senators late Wednesday at the White House.<\/p>\n

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who was at the meeting, told reporters on a conference call that the president remained \u201csteadfast\u201d in his decision not to stay in Syria, or Afghanistan, \u201cforever.\u201d But the senator did not disclose the latest thinking on the withdrawal timeline.<\/p>\n

Paul said\u00a0Trump\u00a0told the group, \u201cWe’re not going to continue the way we’ve done it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. \u2014 A solemn procession. A long salute. A chaplain’s prayer. President Donald\u00a0Trump\u00a0travelled to Delaware’s Dover …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":198453,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-jill-colvin","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}