After Syria missile strikes, US stuck in holding pattern

The drama of U.S. and allied missile strikes on Syria has obscured a sobering fact: The U.S.-led campaign to eliminate the Islamic State from Syria has stalled.

The U.S. has 2,000 troops in Syria assisting local Arab and Kurdish fighters against IS, even as President Donald Trump resists deeper U.S. involvement and is eager to withdraw completely in coming months. Trump wants "other people" to deal with Syria, whose civil war has spawned the greatest humanitarian crisis since World War II in terms of refugees.

In this image provided by the U.S. Air Force, a C-17 Globemaster III, assigned to the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, conducts combat airlift operations for U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq and Syria on April 13, 2018. The drama of U.S. and allied missiles strikes on Syria has obscured the fact that the U.S.-led campaign to eliminate the Islamic State from Syria has stalled. This is an illustration of the many-layered complexities of the Syrian conflict. (Tech. Sgt Gregory Brook/U.S. Air Force via AP)

It's unclear whether Trump will go ahead with a total U.S. withdrawal while IS retains even a small presence in Syria.

Since January, when Trump asserted in his State of the Union address that "very close to 100 percent" of IS territory in Syria and Iraq had been liberated, progress toward extinguishing the extremists' caliphate, or self-proclaimed state, has ground to a halt and shows no sign of restarting. U.S. warplanes continue to periodically bomb remaining pockets of IS in eastern Syria, but ground operations by U.S. partner forces have slowed.

"We've halted forward progress and are essentially attempting to avoid losing territory we've gained to date," said Jennifer Cafarella, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. She sees two potential solutions: send additional U.S. combat power to eastern Syria to take on IS more directly, or resolve a diplomatic dispute with Turkey that has largely sidelined the main U.S. military partner in Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces.

Now that Trump has upped the ante by attacking Syria directly for the second time in just over a year, Cafarella said in an interview this week, it is possible that Syria and its two main international supporters — Russia and Iran — will retaliate militarily against American forces and their Kurdish and Arab partners in eastern Syria "in an attempt to compel an American withdrawal by raising the cost of continued American involvement."

The U.S. began bombing IS in Syria in September 2014 and deployed an initial contingent of 50 special operations troops in the country the following year. The anti-IS campaign gained momentum in 2016 and made its biggest gains during Trump's first year in office.

A spokesman for the U.S.-led military coalition against IS refused this week to say how many IS fighters remain. Col. Ryan Dillon said they are holed up mainly in two places in eastern Syria. He said they are in and around the town of Hajin on the Euphrates River north of Bukamal and in Dashisha near the city of Deir el-Zour. They are "contained" in these areas, he asserted, suggesting they are not in immediate danger of being ousted.

FILE - In this April 4, 2018, file photo, a U.S. soldier sits on an armored vehicle on a road leading to the front line with Turkish-backed fighters, in Manbij, north Syria,. The drama of U.S. and allied missiles strikes on Syria has obscured the fact that the U.S.-led campaign to eliminate the Islamic State from Syria has stalled. This is an illustration of the many-layered complexities of the Syrian conflict. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

Of concern, Dillon said, are indications that IS is stepping up successful attacks against pro-government fighters elsewhere in Syria.

The Trump administration has been saying in recent months that 98 percent of IS territory has been liberated, suggesting the campaign was close to final victory, although on April 3 the Army general overseeing the campaign, Joseph Votel, put it differently, saying "well over 90 percent" of the caliphate had been retaken.

"The situation continues to become more and more complex," Votel said, alluding in part to the effects of a Turkish incursion into the town of Afrin in northwestern Syria.

The Afrin operation was part of a Turkish plan to drive the main Syrian Kurdish militia, known as the YPG, away from the Turkish border area. Turkey considers the YPG a threat to its national security and an extension of Kurdish insurgents inside Turkey. But the YPG also is America's main partner in Syria; it forms the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF. Turkey's advance on Afrin prompted the SDF to shift from fighting IS to confronting Turkey in Afrin.

The result: "We are no longer in an offensive effort on the ground against them (Islamic State)," Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters March 27.

FIEL - In this April 4, 2018, file photo, a U.S. soldier sits on an armored vehicle on a newly installed position, near front line between the U.S-backed Syrian Manbij Military Council and the Turkish-backed fighters, in Manbij, north Syria. The drama of U.S. and allied missiles strikes on Syria has obscured the fact that the U.S.-led campaign to eliminate the Islamic State from Syria has stalled. This is an illustration of the many-layered complexities of the Syrian conflict. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla, File)

Even so, eliminating IS in Syria remains the goal, he said after Trump announced the missile strikes to punish the Syrian government for its alleged chemical weapons use.

The barrage of 105 missiles launched by the United States, Britain and France last week to destroy elements of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal was designed to deter President Bashar Assad from repeating his alleged use of chlorine gas and perhaps nerve gas on civilians in a Damascus suburb. It was unrelated to the IS problem, except in the sense that it highlighted the jumble of actors involved and the absence of a broad U.S. strategy.

Sen. John McCain, one of the Congress' most vocal advocates for a fuller U.S. role in Syria, praised Trump for the missile strikes. But he also said the president needs to look beyond defeating IS and stopping further chemical weapons use by Assad to tackle the bigger challenge of regional conflict.

"Airstrikes disconnected from a broader strategy may be necessary, but they alone will not achieve U.S. objectives in the Middle East," he said.

In this image provided by the U.S. Air Force, a C-17 Globemaster III, assigned to the 816th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, conducts combat airlift operations for U.S. and Coalition forces in Iraq and Syria on April 13, 2018. The drama of U.S. and allied missiles strikes on Syria has obscured the fact that the U.S.-led campaign to eliminate the Islamic State from Syria has stalled. This is an illustration of the many-layered complexities of the Syrian conflict. (Tech. Sgt. Gregory Brook, U.S. Air Force via AP)

NEW YORK (AP) — The Justice Department said Monday that it had withdrawn several thousand documents and “media” related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein after lawyers complained to a New York judge that the lives of nearly 100 victims had been “turned upside down” by sloppy redactions in the government's latest release of records.

The exposed materials include nude photos showing the faces of potential victims as well as names, email addresses and other identifying information that was either unredacted or not fully obscured.

The department blamed it on “technical or human error.”

In a letter to the New York judges overseeing the sex trafficking cases brought against Epstein and confidant Ghislaine Maxwell, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton wrote that the department had taken down nearly all materials identified by victims or their lawyers, along with a “substantial number” of documents identified independently by the government.

Clayton said the department has “revised its protocols for addressing flagging documents” after victims and their lawyers requested changes. Documents are promptly pulled down when flagged by victims, then evaluated before a redacted version of the document can be reposted, “ideally within 24 to 36 hours.”

Two lawyers for Epstein victims wrote the court Sunday seeking “immediate judicial intervention” because of what they described as thousands of instances when the government had failed to redact names and other personally identifying information.

Eight women who identify as Epstein victims added comments to the letter to Judge Richard M. Berman. One wrote that the records’ release was “life threatening." Another said she’d gotten death threats after 51 entries included her private banking information, forcing her to try to shut down her credit cards and accounts.

“There is no conceivable degree of institutional incompetence sufficient to explain the scale, consistency, and persistence of the failures that occurred — particularly where the sole task ordered by the Court and repeatedly emphasized by DOJ was simple: redact known victim names before publication,” the lawyers, Brittany Henderson and Brad Edwards, wrote.

Berman, who presided over Epstein’s sex trafficking case, scheduled a conference for Wednesday.

Also Monday, a section of the Justice Department’s Epstein files website that had contained public court records from Epstein and Maxwell’s criminal cases and civil lawsuits was no longer functioning.

A message seeking comment on the website issue was left for the Justice Department.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an interview Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that there have been sporadic errors in redacting, or blacking out, sensitive information but that the Justice Department has tried to work quickly to address them.

“Every time we hear from a victim or their lawyer that they believe that their name was not properly redacted, we immediately rectified that. And the numbers we’re talking about, just so the American people understand, we’re talking about .001 percent of all the materials,” Blanche said.

Dozens of Associated Press reporters analyzing the files have so far found multiple occasions where a name was redacted in one document, only to be left exposed in another version of the same file.

In other places, names and email addresses are crossed out but not fully blackened out, so they’re still visible. Other text redactions can be easily overridden by simply double clicking on them to reveal the hidden text underneath.

The Justice Department has said all nude or pornographic images were redacted from the 2,000-some videos and 180,000 images in the release, even if they were commercially produced, as the agency considered all women depicted in the images as potential victims.

But reporters with The New York Times still found dozens of uncensored photos of naked young people with their faces unredacted.

The newspaper said the images have since been largely removed or redacted after it notified the Justice Department. It said some of the images appeared to have been taken on the beach at Epstein’s private Caribbean island while others are in a bedroom setting.

In another instance, the AP found a set of more than 100 images of a young, unidentified female lounging on a bed, standing on a beach and at other summertime locations while wearing a short top.

The images are almost fully blacked out so only the person’s arms and legs are clearly visible, save for the very last image, a profile photo that is completely unredacted and reveals her face.

Elsewhere in the files, the face of one of Epstein's alleged underage victims was clearly shown on an organizational chart created by federal investigators.

The poor redactions didn’t just involve victim information.

One email showed Epstein’s entire credit card number, expiration date and security code. An interview transcript from the investigation into Epstein’s suicide included a jail worker’s full Social Security number and date of birth. Some email addresses were visible under thin cross-outs.

At an unrelated sex trafficking trial in New York on Monday, lawyers for two high-end real estate brokers and their brother asked for a mistrial because their names had appeared in some of the Epstein documents.

Deanna Paul, a defense lawyer at the trial of Tal, Oren and Alon Alexander, said prosecutors had “destroyed the possibility of a fair trial” by letting documents get out that falsely suggested an association with Epstein. The brothers have pleaded not guilty to drugging and raping multiple girls and women from 2008 to 2021. They aren't accused of having anything to do with Epstein's abuse of underage girls.

Judge Valerie E. Caproni rejected the mistrial request after she individually questioned jurors, all of whom said they hadn’t seen any news about the brothers. Still, she confronted a prosecutor about the matter, asking, “Government, really?”

“Yes, I understand where the court's coming from,” replied Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Espinosa.

She said the documents had been withdrawn from public circulation.

__ The AP is reviewing the documents released by the Justice Department in collaboration with journalists from CBS, NBC, MS NOW and CNBC. Journalists from each newsroom are working together to examine the files and share information about what is in them. Each outlet is responsible for its own independent news coverage of the documents.

A document that was included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files is photographed Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

A document that was included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files is photographed Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026, shows the report when Epstein was taken into custody on July 6, 2019. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)