ALLEPO, Syria – An angry and tearful Syria informed the international community today that it is most definitely pregnant, the result of a late pull-out by the U.S. after a long intercourse, sources confirmed today.

Syria’s news followed a White House announcement that as a result of an agreement with Turkey, the U.S. will withdraw military forces from Syria on a timeline being developed. Critics claim the withdrawal jeopardizes the Syrian Democratic Forces, which receive American military weapons and support.

“What bullshit. Since 2013, the U.S. was all like, ‘I really care about you,’ and ‘don’t worry I’ll be careful,’” Syria told reporters. “How was I supposed to know the U.S. would only stay in long enough to spawn a bunch of freedom fighters but pull out as soon as it got some international booty call offer from my thotty neighbor, Turkey?”

“Turkey acts like the queen bee around here because she thinks our father, the Ottoman Empire, loved her best like, 100 years ago,” Syria added. “Now thanks to her cozying up to America I’ll be left with a lot of children who are pissed off and heavily armed. And their deadbeat daddy’s initials are U.S.A.”

Foreign interventions require clear national goals, operations crafted to achieve defined objectives, and strategic considerations, according to foreign policy experts. Asked how many of these elements the US intervention in Syria included, Dr. Owen Killian at the Brookings Institution responded, “Pretty much none of them. The U.S. appears to have entered Syria with little planning about how long to stay, how to end the affair, or the impact of fucking around in the Middle East.”

“This basically shows all the forethought and follow through of a drunken frat boy,” Killian continued. “You can’t stop the biology of intervention. Disgorging forces into a country without protection almost always results in a lot of angry offspring, especially if Marines are involved.”

Syria said she regrets the affair.

“I should have seen this coming,” Syria said. “America pulled the same shit in 1984 when it withdrew from Lebanon, and that left the world with that psycho brat named Hezbollah.”

Although a contingent of French forces will remain in Syria, the American pullout raises the potential for competing powers to fill a regional power vacuum.

“Who’s going to help me raise these kids?” Syria asked. “That nut case ISIS will steal them in a Damascus minute if I turn my back. Russia and Iran are lurking around, but they’re creepy and crazy. China is always willing to send money, but that comes with a lot of strings. Only France seems to be really committed to sticking around.”

“Are you kidding me? France?” Syria added with a sigh. “Great. My kids are going to grow up to be fucking mimes.”

Days after President Donald Trump announced he would be pulling all U.S. troops out of Syria, a Marine first sergeant on the ground has refused to let any of them leave until “every swingin’ dick” has filled out their leave chits, sources confirmed today.

“Hold on there, motivators. No one’s going anywhere until you all have a daggum hour-by-hour safety plan in place,” said 1st Sgt. Ray Thornton. “And there ain’t no way in hell the CO will approve these chits until squad leaders have inspected every friggin’ POV.”

Thornton stressed to the Marines that anyone planning to travel farther from Syria than the allowed 200-mile leave boundaries would need to have a special plan in place and would need to call CENTCOM every 24 hours to check in.

“I signed the wrong block on my leave chit, and now I’m stuck in Raqqah by myself until after New Years,” said Cpl. Ryan Payne. “This sucks!”

Within hours of Trump’s announcement on Wednesday, Thornton had the entire formation covered and aligned by the border to prepare to leave, but they ended up being stuck there for days waiting for the armory sight count to be up.

“Count it again!” shouted Thornton, enemy artillery rounds falling around the Marines. “And who the hell submitted this roster as an Excel spreadsheet? I asked for a PDF!”

At press time, all troops had been recalled to Syria for an emergency police call to find a missing canteen.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan President Ashraf Ghani issued a public call today for the U.S. to take action on the feral drones marauding the skies of eastern Afghanistan.

“When they escape these drones roost in our mountains and attack our vehicles and machinery,” Ghani said. “If the U.S. is serious about rebuilding the country for the future, they will act on this problem before it gets out of control.”

Abdul Jabbar Naeemi, the governor of Khost Province, claims that feral drones have destroyed over three hundred vehicles, essential infrastructure and some of the swankiest bed down locations in his province.

“It is becoming an infestation,” he said. “The Americans introduced these things to our land, they must do something about it before it is too late.”

Kabul University’s top Dronologist, Dr. Feroz Sherazi, said the problem has grown worse over the years because of the isolation of the Hindu Kush Mountains.

“There are no natural predators and tons of poppy and scrap metal,” he said. “It’s a perfect breeding ground. That’s why we are seeing entire nests develop hellfire missiles.”

Ghani’s cabinet has a proposal that asks for $8 billion over four years to wrangle all the drones onto a preserve in Badakhshan Province. Local aide workers will neuter the drones once they reach full maturity then administer a vaccination program to prevent rust accumulation.

The Taliban have also made action on feral drones a precondition for peace talks with the Afghan government along with the withdrawal of all foreign troops and the transfer of Justin Bieber into their custody.

For its part, the Pentagon maintains that it has complete control of every drone it has ever brought to Afghanistan, and the CIA issued a rebuttal that was completely redacted.

TIJUANA, Mexico — A massive caravan of illegal strippers heading to the U.S.-Mexico border was stopped at the border by a deployment of U.S. soldiers with engagement rings, sources confirm today.

The strippers, most of whom were from South America, had joined the annual march to the U.S. border seeking asylum at one of the many strip clubs outside of 29 Palms. Most had been walking for months with little food, water, or shelter. The drastic conditions resulted in the perfect storm of losing a bit of weight, tightening up c-section scars, and weakened judgement, which made them the perfect target for a third marriage.

“We met them in a three to one ratio, so we knew that it was critical to engage them immediately,” said Col. Todd Richardson, Task Force Lonely Patriot Commander. “Then they started throwing rocks. By our Rules of Engagement, that meant we could throw rocks back at them— and by that, I mean cubic zirconia.”

“Tear gas? Oh, that’s not tear gas,” said Richardson. “They’re crying because they’re happy. This will be the best 3-6 months of their lives.”

At last estimate, 30 percent of the strippers, which arrived just today, are pregnant with military dependents to be born in six months.

“It’s hell out there,” said Chaplain (Maj.) Bobby Weatherly. “I’ve never been under so much strain to pull together so many marriages so quickly. We’re out womanned out there. I had to call in close pair support.”

The troops have been stationed on the border since October to stop any illegal immigrants from entering the country. By the end of the month, 100 percent of the stripper caravan is expected to enter the country legally as military spouses and build their own businesses selling essential oils.

“This has been a glorious military exercise,” said Richardson. “From the second they started throwing those rocks, I told the boys the penguins threw rocks as a sign of affection and that they were weapons free with those rings.”

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Four zip-tied Somali nationals placed bets on how many Navy SEAL memoirs they would be featured in, according to three SEAL memoirs already published since yesterday’s stand-off.

“Three shots in the dark, and the sacred rite of warfare had ended,” read one description of the mission in 2nd Class Petty Officer Jim MacDonald’s memoir “After Action: Hindsight through NVGs.” “It was a scene that has played out countless times in history: a little boat rocking in the moonlight that was like the gaze of Valhalla, a band of pirates arguing heatedly about how many airport bookstores would carry ghostwritten accounts of their capture.”

Another account of the event appeared in 2nd Class Petty Officer Joe Silvo’s “No Fear: Lessons on Hard Core Leadership for Market Uncertainty.”

“Hard core leaders eat accountability for breakfast,” read the opening paragraph of Chapter One: Hard Core Competencies. “But it can also make even the hardest core leaders feel vulnerable. For instance, when a band of pirates ridiculed me to tears as shameless self-promoter who would disgrace the Navy by cashing in on the prestige of the SEAL name to sell schlock to corporate executives, I almost didn’t ask them for a quote for this book.”

The betting took place after SEAL snipers killed three armed pirates who had taken an American oil tanker crew hostage in a small boat in the Gulf of Aden. Four Somalis were left to contemplate their fates as the SEALs moved in.

“As the bow of our boat parted the mist, we heard groans of agony rising from the pirate’s dinghy,” recalled Chief Petty Officer Ruben Martinez in “Crunch Time: Navy SEAL Secrets to Rock-Hard Abs.”

“Prepared for an ugly scene, we were surprised to find the pirates alert and unharmed, resigned to the fact that they would be reduced to two-dimensional caricatures in the many, many books that would be written about this non-event.”

The captives were driven to piracy by social and environmental forces that were out of their control, which should be considered when depicting them in film or literature, according to screenwriter Katherine Heller who designed the memoir-writing phase of SEAL Qualification Training.

“Picture a community devastated by war, disease, starvation, and neglect, and drop it right at the edge of the sea,” she told a class Wednesday, underlining “Raise The Stakes” on a chalkboard. “It’s the brutal friction between these two realities — the barbarity of man, the endlessness mystery of the raging ocean — that wrought these charact … I mean, survivors, and drove them to confrontation with the most hardened killers in the US military.”

“This is ‘Lone Survivor‘-level sales for anyone who does it right,” she added.

As Duffel Blog went to press, the four as-yet unnamed men were en route to a holding facility in Norfolk, Virginia, where they will face a grueling schedule of interviews by the hundreds of SEALs currently writing memoirs.

HELMAND, Afghanistan — A smart bomb has been used to destroy something that costs more than a smart bomb for the first time since the introduction of precision-guided munitions in 1968, sources confirmed today.

U.S. forces employed Hellfire laser-guided missiles to destroy five Taliban gun trucks as they prepared to attack Musa Qala, a district center in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

“We assess the value of these trucks that we destroyed as being about $200,000 a pop,” Gen. Austin S. Miller, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, told reporters. “A Hellfire missile only costs $115,000. This was the most efficient strike we’ve seen in this war yet.

The White House said the strike is proof the administration’s strategy in Afghanistan is working.

“This is what winning looks like. It’s proof that we’re putting the Taliban in a place where they be forced to negotiate,” said a senior administration official, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “They can’t afford this.”

Some Pentagon officials have pushed back on this assessment.

“The armored Humvees that the Taliban had stolen from the Afghan National Army originally cost $220,000, and we paid the Afghan interior ministry $8,300 in bribes to get them into the country,” John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, told reporters. “Also, the Taliban were using these as substitutes for trucks that they buy for $800 in Peshawar. So the general’s assessment of the replacement cost of these vehicles is not accurate.”

Foreign policy experts have raised concerns the White House could be overstating the long-term effects of the strike.

“This will not have a significant impact on the outcome of the conflict,” noted John Gentle, a foreign policy expert at RAND Corporation. “The U.S. spends $167 million a day in Afghanistan, and the American people don’t even know we’re still there. I don’t think they really expect our forces there to be efficient at this point. What is an efficient war, anyway?”

Samuel X. Clemens of No Such Agency contributed to this report.

If you didn’t see it yourself, today’s five paragraph mission plan delivered by 2nd Lt. Smith was an absolute doozy. Here are ten of the most outrageous comments, annotated by SAW gunner PFC Ryan Joseph.

1. “Hey men, how’s everyone doing?” It has been well documented that Smith gives 0.0 fucks about anyone in this platoon.

2. “We’ve got a good mission to accomplish today.” Clearly Smith is already well versed in the officer skill of blindly saying yes to anything that comes down the pike, but come on, we all know this mission is garbage.

3. “We have reliable intelligence that the enemy is in a weakened state as the fighting season draws to a close.” Oh, really? Does ‘a weakened state’ simply mean that the local men might not pick up their weapons for the next few months, but then again they might? If so then, yes, weakened, we agree.

4. “Most dangerous course of action is that the enemy masses a fire team-plus and synchronizes small arms fire with the detonation of an improvised explosive device, which we will overcome with fire superiority.” Wrong. We would have accepted “enemy masses hundreds of fighters, synchronizes small arms, heavy machine gun and indirect fire to isolate and capture or kill one of our elements” or “Afghan ‘partner’ guns us all down before we leave the wire.”

5. “Order of movement will be second squad followed by third, then first.” Fuck, why is second always first? I mean, we know that the first squad leader has the navigational capability of, well, you, but come on!

6. “We’ll have a quick shura with the local elders.” There is no such thing as a quick shura. There is a shura where you politely talk about nothing for five hours and then they lie to you about what you need to know. There is also the abbreviated four hour version where they think you’re rude for cutting small talk short before asking them where the fuck the bad guys are.

7. “Gather intelligence on enemy disposition.” See above. We will gather lies and / or meaningless phrases from the men who would be fighting us themselves were they able-bodied.

8. “Our Afghan partners will clear all buildings prior to our entering the village.” There’s a recipe for success!

9. “We’ll need to make sure we initiate our movement back to base while we still have daylight.” WHY???

10. “Has anyone seen NODs? Things are green when you look through them.” OMG I can’t.

BAGRAM, Afghanistan – A military contractor has nearly returned from his sixth year in Afghanistan, but despite his worn American flag patch hat, near constant operational name drops, and almost-muscular physique, he has never actually served in the military, sources confirm today.

Mark Snufflepuff has never let that stop him, though, pushing the boundaries of what may or may not be considered stolen valor. He retains the right to blanket his social media with cringeworthy pro-American memes, pictures of his pre-workout, and his ability to make bad financial decisions.

“Vet culture is American culture. I don’t see really any difference from me and the guys pulling the triggers,” Snufflepuff said. “Hell no, I’ve never left the office. Well, the office and the gym. And the DFAC, massage parlor, Pizza Hut, the usual.”

Snufflepuff has created an exhaustive to-do list after waking up from his post-deployment hangovers. It includes physical therapy appointments for bad knees he acquired from lifting with Special Forces, Tinder dates he’s lined up, and stocking up on bottled water so he can continue to build his pyramid of spit bottles.

“I had to stop going out with him. He wears Affliction T-shirts, running shoes when he goes to the club, and always has a set of dog tags hanging out,” said Staff Sgt. Jack Spitty, one of Mark’s many friends on Facebook. “He has a higher high fade than I do. It was cool when I was an E4, but now I can’t bring myself to be around him.”

Snufflepuff is also excited to start a new t-shirt company, or brewery, or whatever. Whatever he thinks he will be able to market against his fellow vet bros, to paraphrase his rambling responses.

“I pay my taxes. I’m no different from them. Got my 5.11 clothes, finishing up the paperwork on this third divorce, and I think I’ll use the cash from this last deployment to rock a little further down my arm with this sick ink,” Snufflepuff said, pointing to his tribal tattoo on his right arm.

He’s deployed for now but can’t wait to get back stateside so he can practice his real calling: alcoholism.

DuffelBlog correspondent Danger Close also contributed to this article.