Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has launched a scathing attack on US President Donald Trump.
Mr McConnell disparaged the decision by President Trump to withdraw US forces from northeastern Syria as a strategic nightmare.
The Senate majority leader's intervention comes just days after the US president offered a strong defence of his decision to pull out US troops from the Turkey-Syria border.
"Withdrawing US forces from Syria is a grave strategic mistake. It will leave the American people and homeland less safe, embolden our enemies, and weaken important alliances. Sadly, the recently announced pullout risks repeating the Obama administration’s reckless withdrawal from Iraq, which facilitated the rise of the Islamic State in the first place," Mitch McConnell wrote in the Washington Post.
He appeared to suggest that the withdrawal would hurt the United States of America's national security interests and allow the Islamic State terrorist group time to regroup.
"Predictably, our adversaries seem to be relishing these developments. The resulting geopolitical chain reaction appears to have been perfectly distilled by an online video which, according to reports, shows a smiling Russian “journalist” strolling around a just-abandoned US military base in northern Syria. A strategic calamity neatly captured in one Facebook post," he added.
The highest-ranking Republican in the Senate appeared to cast aspersions on the judgement of President Trump.
Members of the Kurdish troops who were in league with US troops in fighting Islamic State terrorists accused the Trump administration of betrayal.
The withdrawal exposed the Kurds to attacks from Turkish troops.