Blake Hall
More than 8,500 ISIS fighters have been killed at the hands of United States and coalition forces, according to U.S. Central Command’s Gen. Lloyd Austin amid testimony to the House Armed Services Committee Tuesday.
Austin said that ISIS “has assumed a defensive crouch” in Iraq, and doing much the same in Syria.
Using another acronym for the terror group – ISIL – the general imparted that they’ve disrupted ISIS’ ability to gain control in the region and that “we’re about where we’d said we’d be” as far as progress.
“But make no mistake,” he added. “ISIL is losing this fight. He (they) will be defeated.”
Despite the momentum gained in defeating this infamous threat, Austin told Congress that the Middle East is more chaotic than he has ever seen before.
Just last week Director of National Intelligence James Clapper announced to Congress that the ISIS foreign fighting force had about 20,000 individuals, an increase of 4,000 from this past fall.