Heidi Alexander: “I am glad I had the opportunity to be on the floor today to hear the remarks of the Senator from Virginia. All of us…”

“I am glad I had the opportunity to be on the floor today to hear the remarks of the Senator from Virginia. All of us look forward to the President's remarks tomorrow night. I am going to reserve my comments because of the seriousness of the subject and out of respect for the Office of the President until after the President addresses the Nation. But I would say this. Having heard the Senator from Virginia, I hope the President and his advisers listened carefully to what the Senator from Virginia said. None of us want to see another military adventure in the Middle East. As in Virginia and West Virginia and Tennessee, we have had thousands--tens of thousands of Tennesseans who have been in Iraq and Afghanistan three, four, five, or six times on tours of duty. But this ISIS threat is a different kind of threat to civilization, and very well could be a threat to the United States. It requires a response. It requires the President's leadership. He is the Commander in Chief, and it is his job to lay out for us a firm and clear strategy for, in the words of his administration, how we will defeat and destroy this new movement. In thinking about whether to come to the Congress, I think it is useful for the President to think back to the first President Bush and the decision he had to make. I was in his cabinet. I came just about that time and the idea of a ground war in the Middle East was a shocking thought.…”