(Defense News) Joe Gould - More than 100 Islamic State prisoners escaped from prison after Turkey's incursion into northern Syria, U.S. special envoy for Syria Jim Jeffrey told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday. While lawmakers from both sides of the aisle argued that the U.S. had a moral obligation to protect its Kurdish partners, Jeffrey said that was never U.S. policy. He had explicitly and repeatedly told the Kurds that the U.S. would not take military action against Turkey, a NATO ally. Jeffrey said the presence of 25 U.S. troops in the path of Turkish forces "was not in the Turkish decision chain," adding that "the Turks would have simply driven around them."
2019-10-25 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive