Increasingly desperate Islamic State fighters in Iraq are in full retreat and showing other signs of giving up in the face of a relentless campaign by Iraqi forces, backed by coalition airpower, the top U.S. military land commander in Iraq said Thursday, Washington Examiner reports.
"The Iraqis are winning. To use a sports analogy they are 7 and 0," said Maj. Gen. Robert White, the Combined Joint Forces Land Component commander.
White said that while Iraqi forces still have a few major population centers to clear of ISIS control, the terrorist group has for all intents and purposes been vanquished in Iraq.
"They know they are losing. They can see it coming, and they are starting to run away, and they are starting to ask for surrender, which is something you would not have seen a year ago," White said in a briefing from Iraq piped into the Pentagon.
"Daesh [ISIS] is fighting for survival. The physical caliphate has been destroyed. It will be finished off in another part of the world here shortly," White said.
