US Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander, sent a letter to all 26 NATO defense chiefs asking them to drop troop restrictions in Afghanistan, reports Stars and Stripes. Jones says that some countries restrict which areas their troops can be used in while others have imposed strict rules about combat participation. He likened the situation to NATO’s early problems in Kosovo, when initially “commanders spent more time deciding what they couldn’t do with their forces rather than what we could do.”
The U.S. sent Air Force F-16s over central Syria in a show of force following the Dec. 13 killing of two U.S. Army Soldiers and one American civilian interpreter by a gunman linked to the Islamic State group.
