Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I would suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll. The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll. Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Whitehouse). Without objection, it is so ordered. Syria Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, at this late hour of our session, until September, I think it is important we continue to pay attention to and be concerned about the situation in Syria. Today, Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, announced the failure of his mission. If there is anything about the conflict in Syria that did not surprise most of us, it is the fact that Kofi Annan's mission was a failure. It was doomed to failure from the beginning. It was based on the premise that somehow Bashar Assad would be motivated to stop the massacre of his people. It was motivated on the premise that somehow U.N. observers could come in and stand between the two fighting forces but totally ignore the fundamentals of this conflict. The fundamentals of this conflict are simple: It is the Syrian people attempting to assert their God-given rights and throw off the yoke of a brutal and unconscionable dictator, and on the other side of the equation Bashar Assad's commitment to doing whatever is necessary, including massacring now as many as 20,000 of his own people in his desperate quest to remain in power in Syria.…”