NBC News Chief Pentagon Correspondent Jim Miklaszewski reported Monday that in addition to providing immediate aid to Kurdish forces and protecting Yazidi refugees, the Pentagon is preparing for a ten to twenty year challenge in containing ISIL militants.
"Right now everybody's attention and all the planning going on just a few floors right below me here, all the planning is for these two limited missions. One, to secure that Kurdish area and stop the advance by the ISIS rebels. The other is to protect those Yazidi worshippers that are trapped aboard the mountain. We're told there is very active planning under way as we speak to provide that safe corridor that the president talked about on Saturday to help them escape their predicament. Right now it looks like it's going to require some help from the British and the French, who the president talked to over the weekend," Miklaszewski said on Morning Joe.
"But in the long term, and, you know, there's always somebody in the building looking at the long term and it does not look very good to U.S. military officials I'm talking to. Even if we resolve those two situations and even if ISIS were somehow contained in Iraq, people here are now looking at this as being a 10 to 20-year challenge, Joe," he added.