'ISIS Will Be Back.’ Lawmakers Voice Syria Fears To Pentagon Chiefs by Joe Gould – Defense News
House and Senate lawmakers on Thursday left Pentagon briefings on the crisis in Syria frustrated with the tangle of problems that came with President Donald Trump’s decision to pull troops from Syria and voicing new fears the Islamic State will regroup to wage terror.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley held separate meetings about Syria with the House and Senate armed services committees in which they offered assurances the counter-Islamic State fight remained a top priority, and they were were pressed about how that fight could be effectively prosecuted after the U.S. withdrawal alienated the Syrian Kurds who were its most critical ally.
Lawmakers refused to discuss the contents of the two classified meetings, but voiced their worries afterwards, including about how the U.S. protects Kurds from Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria, how it protects its own troops in the crossfire and whether that Islamic State militants escaping Kurdish-run prisons signals new terror attacks are on the horizon…