Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis will face questions Monday on Capitol Hill about the administration's authority to use military force overseas as members of Congress seek answers over the killing of four U.S. soldiers earlier this month in Niger.
Mattis and Tillerson will testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which they privately told several months ago that the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force gives the American military ample authority to fight terrorist groups.
However, the fatal Oct. 4 ambush on the American soldiers has brought to light the extent to which the U.S. military is fighting terrorism in foreign countries, including Afghanistan, Syria and Niger, one of a reported half-dozen African countries with American troops.
Even congressional Republicans and Democrats after the ambush seemed startled to learn the depth of the U.S. commitment, which has reignited a Capitol Hill debate about replacing or updating the post-Sept. 11 authorization to reflect current threats.
Among those who have called for changes is Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.
"We were in Niger to deal with an ISIS threat," he said recently. "It's time for Congress to finally revisit the authorization, which is badly out of date and have a debate on full view of the American public about all the different countries where we are in engaged in military action right now."
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., recently trolled Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on Twitter after Graham told NBC he wasn't fully aware of U.S. military operations there.
"You know you are in too many wars in too many places when even warmonger Lindsay Graham can't keep track anymore," Paul tweeted.
Kaine and Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., are sponsoring legislation to install a new war authority for operations against the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
A senior State Department official told Fox News on Monday before Tillerson arrived on Capitol Hill that he will again tell the Senate panel the 2001 authorization gives the United States sufficient legal authority to fight terror groups.
The official also said Tillerson will tell the panel any new authorization must have no time nor geographic constraints and that the Niger attack has not changed the administration's thinking on a new AUMF.
Roughly 800 U.S. service members are in Niger as part of a French-led mission to defeat the extremists in West Africa.
Those calling for the 2001 authorization to update also argue Islamic State militants didn't exist 16 years ago and they are entrenched in a country – Syria – that the U.S. didn't expect to be fighting in.
Nor did the 16-year-old authorization anticipate military confrontations with the Syrian government. Trump in April ordered the firing of dozens of Tomahawk missiles at an air base in central Syria and American forces in June shot down a Syrian Air Force fighter jet.
Beyond that, Trump approved a troop increase in Afghanistan, the site of America's longest war, and the U.S. backs a Saudi Arabia-led coalition carrying out airstrikes in Yemen.
Previous attempts to end the old authorization and force Congress to craft a new one have failed.
Democrats in the House complained that Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., used underhanded tactics after an amendment was stripped from a military spending bill that would have repealed the 2001 war authorization 240 days after the bill was enacted. Proponents of the measure said eight months was enough time to approve new war authority.
GOP leaders said voting to rescind existing war authority without a replacement in hand risks leaving U.S. troops and commanders in combat zones without the necessary legal authority they need to carry out military operations.
A similar effort in the Senate, led Paul, also came up short.
Paul, a member of the committee and a leader of the GOP's noninterventionist wing, has accused his colleagues of surrendering their war-making power to the White House.
Fox News' Rich Edson and Chad Pergram and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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