Political Quotes

“I think the first thing to talk about is the ability, first and foremost, to look at the mission and look at the event that led to the need for a discussion in this body and a discussion in this country about our relationship in Syria, and that was the use of chemical weapons by the Asad regime in their own home country against their own people. We know that activity is not only a crime against the Syrian people, but it is a crime against humanity. It is a crime against an international standard that has been in place since World War I and has been greatly honored because of the devastating effects of using chemical weapons. So when Senator Manchin and I looked at this--and we had long discussions with experts in the region--our first concern was securing those chemical weapons and what we could do to make sure those weapons would never again be used on any citizen of Syria and that we would not encourage or in any way give permission to another country to engage in that activity. That is fundamentally the greatest interest we have in securing some kind of resolution in the Congress--to address that concern. Unfortunately, what we saw was not a targeted resolution that addressed that specific problem. Plus, what we were presented with when we returned were two options: Do nothing, which both of us concluded we could not let an attack such as this go unresponded to.…”