“U.S. forces in armored vehicles conducted a patrol on the Syria-Turkey border on Thursday, the first such exercise since a U.S. decision to withdraw from northeast Syria,” Reuters reports.

“A military source from the Kurdish-led SDF said the patrols would ‘not be one-time’ only.”

President Trump has a long history of calling for the United States to “take the oil” in the Middle East, in Iraq and Syria in particular, ABC News reports.

“But any oil in both countries belongs to their governments, and according to U.S. law and treaties it has ratified, seizing it would be pillaging, a technical term for theft during wartime that is illegal under U.S. and international law.”

Said Trump just yesterday: “We’re keeping the oil. I’ve always said that — keep the oil. We want to keep the oil, $45 million a month. Keep the oil. We’ve secured the oil.”

“In the days after President Donald Trump paved the way for Turkey to invade Syria, several of his closest allies went to the White House — twice — to try to change his mind,” NBC News reports.

“Retired Gen. Jack Keane, a Fox News analyst, first walked the president through a map showing Syria, Turkey and Iraq on Oct. 8, pointing out the locations of oil fields in northern Syria that have been under the control of the U.S. and its Kurdish allies, two people familiar with the discussion said. That oil, they said Keane explained, would fall into Iran’s hands if Trump withdrew all U.S. troops from the country. Keane went through the same exercise with Trump again on Oct. 14, this time with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) at his side.”

President Trump insisted withdrawal of troops from Syria has been “strategically brilliant” and minimized concerns for the Kurds, implying that they allied with the United States only out of their own self-interest, the New York Times reports.

Said Trump: “We paid a lot of money for them to fight with us.”

He dismissed concerns that his decision has opened the way for Russia, Iran and the Syrian government to move into the abandoned territory and reassert their influence in the area: “I wish them all a lot of luck. If Russia wants to get involved in Syria, that’s really up to them.”

“President Trump has ordered a withdrawal of U.S. forces from northern Syria in the face of a Turkish military offensive targeting Kurdish fighters in the region, two days after he promised that the United States was not ‘abandoning’ its partners in the campaign against the Islamic State,” the Washington Post reports.

“Trump ordered a withdrawal of the about 1,000 U.S. troops left in northern Syria late Saturday. The president made the decision after indications that Turkey intends to expand its attack ‘farther south than originally planned and to the west.'”

“The Russian Air Force has repeatedly bombed hospitals in Syria in order to crush the last pockets of resistance to President Bashar al-Assad,” according to an investigation by the New York Times.

“An analysis of previously unpublished Russian Air Force radio recordings, plane spotter logs and witness accounts allowed The Times to trace bombings of four hospitals in just 12 hours in May and tie Russian pilots to each one.”

“The 12-hour period beginning on May 5 represents a small slice of the air war in Syria, but it is a microcosm of Russia’s four-year military intervention in Syria’s civil war. A new front in the conflict opened this week, when Turkish forces crossed the border as part of a campaign against a Kurdish-led militia.”

Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade blasted President Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria.

Said Kimeade: “What kind of message is that to the next ally that wants to side with us? All we did is arm them, and they did all the work. And now we say ‘good luck. Good luck surviving.'”

He added: “What a disaster.”

In a sobering new report, the Pentagon’s independent watchdog concludes that the remnants of the Islamic State militant group have been capitalizing on President Trump’s drawdown in Syria, the Washington Post reports.

From the report: “Despite losing its territorial ‘caliphate,’ the Islamic State solidified its insurgent capabilities in Iraq and was resurging in Syria. The reduction of U.S. forces has decreased the support available for Syrian partner forces at a time when their forces need more training and equipping to respond to the ISIS resurgence.”

Trump, just three weeks ago: “We did a great job. We have 100 percent of the caliphate, and we’re rapidly pulling out of Syria. We’ll be out of there pretty soon.”

New York Times: “As Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, closes in on victory over an eight-year revolt, a secret, industrial-scale system of arbitrary arrests and torture prisons has been pivotal to his success. While the Syrian military, backed by Russia and Iran, fought armed rebels for territory, the government waged a ruthless war on civilians, throwing hundreds of thousands into filthy dungeons where thousands were tortured and killed.”

“Nearly 128,000 have never emerged, and are presumed to be either dead or still in custody, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, an independent monitoring group that keeps the most rigorous tally. Nearly 14,000 were ‘killed under torture.’ Many prisoners die from conditions so dire that a United Nations investigation labeled the process ‘extermination.'”