“No attack – no attack will affect our resolve to accelerate the defeat of ISIS,” Carter declared Tuesday, before the House Armed Services Committee, mere hours after three bomb blasts in Brussels’ main airport and metro killed over 30 people.
He expressed confidence that the US will defeat ISIS in Iraq and Syria and elsewhere and compared the group to a malignant cancer.
“We have the momentum of beating the group in Iraq and Syria. That’s necessary but not sufficient, as the attacks in Belgium suggest,” he added.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford, said last fall it was ISIS that had the momentum in Iraq and Syria. Now, the reverse is true, he informed the committee.
“Since that time they not only have less territory, they have less resources, they have less freedom of movement, and we have reduced the number of fighters that are actually able to flow back and forth (between the two countries),” he explained.
However, Dunford cautioned: “this morning was another reminder that there is a long fight ahead.”
Twin bombings struck the Belgian capital Brussels on Tuesday in the city's airport and a metro station, leaving 33 dead and scores more wounded.
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via Defense News