John Kerry

Every single person I spoke to over the course of my trip expressed strong support for our mission and a willingness to help in some way.

In Syria, the on-the-ground combat will be done by the moderate opposition--which serves as the best counterweight in Syria to extremists like ISIL.

ISIL must be defeated. Period. End of story.

We know that ISIL, as it gets weaker, the moderate opposition will get stronger.

I want to be clear. The United States troops that have been deployed to Iraq, do not and will not, have a combat mission.

The invasion was ISIL into Iraq. The invasion is foreign fighters into Syria.

From the last decade, we know that a sustainable strategy is not U.S. ground forces.

It was quite astonishing to be in Jeddah the other day with the Saudis, Emiratis, the Bahrainis, the Jordanians, the Qataris, the Turks, the Lebanese, and Iraqis.

The United States will not go it alone. That has been a fundamental principle on which President Obama has sought to organize this effort.

There is no negotiation with ISIL. There is nothing to negotiate.

I state unequivocally, and it is not a passing sentence, that I welcome the input, need the input of this committee

I hope that when that is done, it is done with the administration explicitly seeking that.

We must be clear-eyed about the risks before providing our enduring support for this operation.

There would be no capacity for success here if we had not been able to see the Iraqi Government come together.

We have been focused on ISIL since its inception as the successor to Al Qaeda of Iraq in 2013.

ISIL must be defeated, period. End of story.

I do hope that the Secretary today will outline the true nature of the threat.

We need to ensure that whatever authorization for the use of military force we consider is comprehensive and appropriate in scope and duration to meet the threat and sustain the fight.

I am very disappointed that the administration has chosen to go about what they are doing without explicitly seeking the authorization of Congress.

The bottom line is we will not be successful with a military campaign alone, and we know it.

We redoubled our efforts, frankly, to help move the Iraqi political process forward.

So as President Obama described last week when he spoke directly to the American people, we do have a clear strategy to degrade, defeat, and destroy ISIL.

We have been pushing for it for longer than that.

I believe we need to defeat ISIL before they develop the operational capacity to perform a September 11-like attack.

We must not repeat the mistakes of the past, given the nature of the threat we face.