Repeal the 2001 AUMF

Reps. Barbara Lee (D – CA) and Walter Jones (R – NC) are pushing one such bill, aiming to force Congress to debate US involvement in Syria, and to repeal the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) to prevent the administration from using it as an excuse for the operation.

With the repeal of the AUMF, the bill would also explicitly forbid the deployment of additional US ground troops to Syria without any permission from Congress. The bill is gaining some support in both parties, though past efforts to repeal the AUMF, and to try to limit the wars in Iraq and Syria, have never gained enough support to pass.

If it does get support, this might force a significant shift in policy, with the US nominally having capped their Syrian force at 503, but having closer to 2,000 by most recent estimates. This mirrors caps that were in place in Iraq, which were similarly long since blown past.

This is just one of the bills aimed at US policy is Syria, with Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D – HI) and Sen. Rand Paul (R – KY) offering a bipartisan “Stop Arming Terrorists Act,” which would forbid US government funds from being used to support al-Qaeda, ISIS, or any other terrorist group.

Meanwhile, events in Syria are going the opposite way

Fighters in Syria have begun a major ground offensive, backed up by US forces, to retake a vital dam near Raqqa, Syria, from ISIS, a US official told CNN Wednesday.
Tabqa Dam is located 25 miles west of Raqqa, ISIS' self-declared capital, and supplies electric power to a wide area of Syria, according to the US.
The US is backing Syrian Democratic Forces and Syrian Arab Forces. US military advisers are also on the ground with the SDF but not necessarily at the front lines, the official said. In addition, Marines are beginning to provide artillery fire support.

another civilian massacre

A suspected US air strike on a school being used as a shelter by families displaced from the Isil-held Syrian city of Raqqa killed at least 33 people on Tuesday, in the latest high civilian casualty raid by the coalition.
The death toll is expected to rise, according to local activists, who said bodies were still being pulled from the rubble and many families were unaccounted for.
The nearest Isil installation to the site of the air strike was a religious school two miles away, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights...
“The international coalition indiscriminately bombs the city, civilians expect their death coming down from the sky.”
A coalition raid on a mosque outside the city of Aleppo last Thursday evening left as many as 46 dead, making it the deadliest for civilians alleged against the coalition since it began its campaign against Isil two years ago

ISIS may be about to fall, but al-Qaeda in Syria is still on the rise.
near Damascus

Syrian insurgents seized several government positions on the outskirts of Damascus on Tuesday in the third day of their most ambitious offensive in the capital in years, sending a sharp reminder that the war in Syria is far from over.
Fierce fighting broke out on the northeastern edge of Damascus, as a mix of Islamist rebel groups and hard-line Qaeda-linked jihadists seized an industrial area about a mile from the historic Old City near the heart of the Syrian capital. Rebel offensives erupted in several other parts of the country.

near Hama

Syrian rebels advanced to within a few kilometers of the government-held city of Hama on Wednesday in a major assault in the western region of Syria critically important to President Bashar al-Assad, a war monitor reported.

Kurdish infighting danger

Initially seen as a likely one-off skirmish, the fighting between Kurdish Peshmerga auxiliaries and forces loyal to the PKK is continuing to pick of pace, with the growing skirmishes meaning a resumption of the sort of violence that the local Yazidi population had hoped was over when the Kurdish fighters initially expelled ISIS from the area...
The PKK is a Turkey-based faction, and they have significant forces in Iraq as a consequence of a since-cancelled ceasefire with the Erdogan government. The PYD, the Syrian Kurdish faction, is also seen as close to the PKK, and has been fighting against Peshmerga-affiliated groups in Syria recently, suggesting this divide in Kurdistan could expand into several countries.

the NGA, you should know about it

Even Barack Obama, five months into his presidency, seemed not to have recognized its name. While shaking hands at a Five Guys hamburger restaurant in Washington in May 2009, he asked a customer seated at a table about his job. “What do you [do]?” the president inquired. “I work at NGA, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency,” the man answered. Obama appeared dumbfounded. “So, explain to me exactly what this National Geospatial…” he said, unable to finish the name. Eight years after that videotape aired, the NGA remains by far the most shadowy member of the Big Five spy agencies, which include the CIA and the National Security Agency.
Despite its lack of name recognition, the NGA’s headquarters is the third-largest building in the Washington metropolitan area, bigger than the CIA headquarters and the U.S. Capitol...
The NGA is to pictures what the NSA is to voices. Its principal function is to analyze the billions of images and miles of video captured by drones in the Middle East and spy satellites circling the globe. But because it has largely kept its ultra-high-resolution cameras pointed away from the United States, according to a variety of studies, the agency has never been involved in domestic spy scandals like its two far more famous siblings, the CIA and the NSA. However, there’s reason to believe that this will change under President Donald Trump.