Pentagon Spox: We Don’t Have ‘Good Number’ Of How Many ISIS Fighters US Has Killed

During Tuesday’s press briefing, Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Peter Cook stated that there “isn’t a good number” of the ISIS fighters killed by the US, and that such a number wouldn’t be “a good metric of success,” or easy to determine.

Cook was asked about reported numbers that 50,000 ISIS fighters have been killed by the US in Iraq and Syria. He said, “It’s not a number that we talk about publicly, because it’s a — it’s not a good metric of success, and it’s not an easy number to determine, for all the reasons you would think about. This is a warzone. This is a conflict. Much of our efforts are being conducted from the air. We don’t necessarily have the ability to assess everything on the ground in the way we might like. … And so, I — there isn’t a good number for us to share with you, because we don’t have great confidence in that number.”

(video via Real Clear Politics)

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