Lee Terry: “I have during my tenure here voted twice to empower our military to take action. The first time was with Afghanistan…”

“I have during my tenure here voted twice to empower our military to take action. The first time was with Afghanistan; and the President came to the Congress and made a powerful case that it was in our national security interest to do so. I supported that. Then it was with Iraq; and the President came to Congress. He spent a significant amount of time providing evidence and making a case that there was a national security interest. This time, however, it was a surprise to me and to most of my colleagues that this mission was occurring. There has been no attempt to define what the national security interests are, the United States' interests in this military action. Without that, I can't look my constituents in the eyes and tell them why we are in Libya right now and active in military strikes against that nation state. So the one constitutional power that Congress has explicitly is the purse strings. We are exercising that right. I support the effort to pull those strings tight. Let's stop the flow of money into this action.”