...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
group.
Speaking to senior politicians in Washington, Mattis responded to a question about whether the United States was planning on pulling out of Syria -- something President Donald Trump
...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States...
has said would happen "very soon."
Right now, "we are not withdrawing," Mattis told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"You'll see a reenergized effort," he said.
"You'll see increased operations on the Iraqi side of the border, and the French just reinforced us in Syria with special forces here in the last two weeks. This is an ongoing fight right now."
On Tuesday, Trump appeared to walk back his vow to yank U.S. troops from Syria, saying the United States wanted to "leave a strong and lasting footprint​" in the country. Currently, about 2,000 US troops are in Syria, most of them commandos.
Even after IS -- which still control two pockets of territory along the middle Euphrates River Valley -- are defeated, the U.S. military wants to maintain a presence in Syria to prevent the jihadists from returning.
Mattis said he wanted to see more "regional support" for the anti-IS fight and told politicians he was "confident that we would probably regret it" if the U.S. does not contribute to a long-term holding force in Syria.
La Belle France is a longstanding member of the international coalition fighting IS in Iraq and Syria, and helped bombard the jihadists in the djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
area during the Iraqi operation to recapture the city.
La Belle France, along with the U.S. and Britannia, also took part in the April 14 cruise missile strikes against Syrian
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Light of the Alawites...
's chemical weapons-related facilities.