Madam President, in response to the Senator from Kentucky, I would like to say that he is new to the Senate. I do not question his sincerity when it comes to the enforcement of our Constitution. I share his feelings about the responsibility of Congress under that Constitution to declare war. I have held previous Presidents of both political parties to that standard and believe that this President should be held to that standard as well. I may regret some of his characterizations of our President, but I will not go into that at this moment. I will say the following: Let's make the record clear about how we got into this situation and why we got into the situation, which the President said the other night. This was not a matter of waiting until Congress came back from its vacation; it was a matter of innocent people being killed in Libya. It was no mistake what Qadhafi was going to do. He said pointblank: I am going to Benghazi. I am going house to house and room to room and kill people, my own people. It should not come as any surprise because he has a history of that, not only killing his own people but killing those innocent passengers on Pan Am 103. He is a ruthless, bloody dictator, so much so that the Arab League of Nations broke precedent and called for Libya to be suspended as long as Qadhafi was in charge. His own Arab League of Nations suspended him. They then turned to the United Nations and said: Please stop him from killing his own people.
Share & report
More from Dick Durbin
I announce that the Senator from Nevada (Ms. Cortez Masto), the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth), the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), the…
Why did you publicly claim on February 21 that the client list was 'sitting on my desk right now to review?'
I announce that the Senator from New York (Mrs. Gillibrand) and the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy) are necessarily absent. The result was announced--yeas 52, nays 45, as follows: [Rollcall Vote No. 242 Ex.] YEAS--52 Banks Barrasso…
I announce that the Senator from Rhode Island (Mr. Whitehouse) is necessarily absent. The result was announced--yeas 52, nays 46, as follows: [Rollcall Vote No. 229 Leg.] YEAS--52 Banks Barrasso Blackburn Boozman Budd Capito Cassidy…





