Cotton accuses Defense Department of hiding strike in Syria until after votes
Mike Brest
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President Joe Biden authorized retaliatory strikes in Syria last Thursday, though GOP lawmakers have accused the Department of Defense of slow-walking its notification process due to planned hearings and votes on Capitol Hill.
The initial strike against U.S. forces, which killed a U.S. contractor and wounded six other Americans including five service members, occurred at 6:38 a.m. EST on Thursday, though lawmakers were not informed until around 8 p.m. EST that day, according to Politico. In between those events, U.S. Central Command Commander Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla testified in front of the House Armed Services Committee and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley testified in front of the House Appropriations Subcommittee while senators debated the repeal of two authorizations for military force from 1991 and 2002.
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The contention from Republicans is that DOD delayed informing Congress of the strike in order to save themselves from difficult questions and to avoid affecting the vote.
Austin faced questions about the notification process during his testimony in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, though he reiterated there was “no connection between when we notified you, senator, and your vote.”
One amendment that lawmakers considered on Thursday when debating the repeal of the AUMFs would have halted the repeal of the 2002 resolution, which greenlit U.S. military force in Iraq until Iran stopped supporting terror groups in Iraq and Syria.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) flatly said he didn’t believe the secretary, arguing, “I believe that your office specifically withheld notification of this deadly strike against Americans because the Rubio amendment, on which we voted midday, directly touched on exactly this scenario, not repealing these use of force resolutions if the president couldn’t certify that Iran was no longer attacking us in Iran and Syria.”
While Austin reiterated it wasn’t true, Cotton said, “Nothing you can say is going to change my belief about that,” later adding, “I don’t believe that. I don’t believe it. I believe there’s a conscious decision made not to inform Congress because you fear that it might lead to the passage of the Rubio amendment, which would kill the entire bill.”
In prior questioning, the secretary explained that they notified lawmakers of the strike against U.S. forces and their retaliatory strike at the same time, after both had occurred.
“In this case, we had an attack and we launched an attack on the adversaries in the same short period of time. And so because of that compressed time, we did both notifications at the same time; we should have notified you earlier, and we will endeavor to do so,” Austin acknowledged.
American troops launched retaliatory airstrikes against facilities in eastern Syria that were used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and those forces responded once again with rocket fire, this time directed at Green Village and Mission Support Site Conoco. The five service members who were injured in the initial strike and one other who was wounded in the one at Mission Support Site Conoco are all in stable condition, a CENTCOM spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
Col. Joe Buccino, a CENTCOM spokesman, told Politico that Kurilla didn’t mention it during his testimony because “At the time the hearing began, leadership was working to notify the families, and Gen. Kurilla felt it was inappropriate to get ahead of that process in public,” while National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson told the outlet, “All on the same day: we got hit, we planned and executed our response, and we notified Congress.”
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The military was poised to conduct a second round of retaliatory strikes last Friday, but the White House passed, according to the New York Times. There have not been any strikes against U.S. forces since Friday, though there have been roughly 80 such incidents since 2021.
A vote on repealing the two AUMF resolutions will take place in the coming days.