via CBS
U.S. troops were among those killed Wednesday in an attack in northern Syria, the U.S. military has confirmed to CBS News. The U.S.-led coalition in Syria, Operation Inherent Resolve, confirmed in a tweet that, "U.S. service members were killed during an explosion while conducting a routine patrol in Syria today."
A U.S. military official confirmed separately to CBS News senior national defense correspondent David Martin reports by Kurdish media outlets that at least two Americans were among the dead in the city of Manbij, not far from the Turkish border, after an explosion hit a coalition convoy.
The U.S. military has not confirmed how many American casualties were among the bombing victims on Wednesday, but at least one report said as many as four U.S. service members were killed. If true, Martin notes that it would be the single largest loss of U.S. life in Syria since American forces were deployed there in 2015.
Story here.
Initial reports are irking the hell outta me. These bubbas got careless if the mouthpiece on MSNBC is correct. Engel is reporting that US forces frequented a local restaurant a couple of times a week and that they would regularly stop in for food to either eat there or to take out.
That's sloppy as hell.
They made it easy for the bad guys to clock them. That's basic 101 type shit.
We'll get the after action so I'll table that for a second and hope that report is wrong. The bigger issue is the fight itself. Hatred for Trump has the news media pointing to this thing and saying that ISIS isn't dead.
Their force is! How could such a small force, at most 100K fighters in the field, stand up to the might being arrayed against them in the form of the US, Russia, Syria, Iraq, Israel, Turkey and others?
The answer is simple.
They couldn't.
The ISIS dream of a new caliphate died long ago. This is about the next war in the Middle East and we can alter plans without getting dragged into the Syria debacle.
If that terrain is key to the next fight then we need to go all in and win it. Put boots on the ground in a major way and occupy the country. If not then we need to withdraw, alter plans to meet new realities and rest/reset/modernize our forces for the future fight.
Either way we're doing this wrong.
The worst part of this thing? Someone is gonna have to tell those families that their loved one died and reassure them that it was for a noble cause. The person selected needs to be evil as hell, otherwise they won't be able to mutter the lie.
