Sen. Lindsey Graham charged Sunday that Congress has been kept in the dark about military operations overseas, including in Africa, where four soldiers were ambushed in a secret operation — and warned the war against radical Islamic terrorism “is now morphing.”
In an interview on NBC News’ “Meet The Press,” the South Carolina Republican said Senate Foreign Relations Committee head Sen. John McCain “is frustrated and rightly so.”
“We don't know where we're at in the world militarily and what we're doing,” he said. “John McCain is going to try to create a new system to make sure that we can answer the question, ‘why were we there?’ We'll know how many soldiers are there, that if somebody gets killed over there that we won't find out about it in the paper… McCain and [Defense Secretary] General [James] Mattis are going to come up with a new way."
Graham called Africa in particular a new hotspot for ISIS-related terrorism.
"It's spreading around the world especially Africa,” he said of radical Islamic terrorism…the war is now morphing. It's going to places that we haven't heard of before to the American people.”
“We're going to follow the terrorists wherever they go, we're going to use whatever means we need to with partners to destroy them,” he continued. “And whatever time it takes it takes, and most people are not ready for it. but I am. "
On the controversy over President Donald Trump’s condolence call to a young widow of a soldier killed in Niger during an ISIS-affiliated am bus, Graham said though everyone is trying to find blame, the "winners" are "the American people.”
"The winners are the American people to have four young men that would be willing to leave their family and go to a place in the middle of nowhere,” he said, adding:
"I can say this to the families, they were there to defend America, they were there to help allies.”
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