STEIN: Well, criminal? Does it violate international law? Yes. I think it does violate international law.
Q: What violates international law?
STEIN: For example, sending in the troops to Libya. Sending in the troops to Iraq for that matter. I think the criteria for invading other countries is that we need to be under imminent threat. And I think it would be hard to establish that we were under imminent threat, say, in Libya. Or in Iraq for that matter. I would argue that this is not consistent with international law or human rights, and that that should be the basis of our foreign policy going forward. We're proposing essentially a weapons embargo, a freeze on the bank accounts of countries who continue to fund terrorist enterprises and also we call on allies like Turkey to close their borders to the movement of jihadi groups.
The current foreign policy isn't working out so well for us. We've spend $6 trillion since September 11, 2001, on these wars for oil or wars on terror, whatever you call them. A million people have been killed in Iraq alone, and that isn't winning the hearts and minds of people in the Middle East, to say the least. And we have killed or wounded tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers. What do we have to show for it? Failed states and a mass refugee crisis.
And with each new front in this war in the Middle East, we are creating worse terrorist threats.
CARSON: My point is let's not sit here and talk about what we can't do. Instead, we have some terrific military intelligence and advisers who know how to get the job done. Let's ask them.
Q: Are those advisers not being consulted? What do you think that they're saying that is not being paid attention to?
CARSON: All you need to do is go out and talk to a number of the generals who have retired, in many cases prematurely. You want to know the exact reasons why we're not winning and ask what advice has been given and how it has been ignored. I would suggest that you talk to them.
BUSH: I would say a no-fly zone, creating safe zones in Syria, directly arming the Kurds in Iraq, reengaging both politically and militarily with the Sunnis - the Sunni tribal leaders who were effective partners in the creation of the surge. Have our troops be embedded with the Iraqi military. But, basically, all of this needs to be a strategy, not just one-off kind of incremental decisions being made by this president who wants to run out the clock. The strategy ought to be, how do we destroy ISIS and how do we create stability in the aftermath? And, right now, we have neither.
BUSH: I think it is wrong. I think that had we kept a small force in Iraq, we wouldn't have the mess that we have right now.
Q: You want troops to go in, but then everybody agrees there need to be some kind of stability afterwards. If 10,000 was a good sustaining force in Iraq after all the activities, but this is a totally new adventure, it would seem that upwards of 10,000 troops would be necessary for the kind of engagement you're talking about.
BUSH: If I'm commander in chief, my first order is, give me options, and if the military says that we need a fighting force of X- thousand, and this is the best way to destroy ISIS, then I would take that under advisement for sure.
KASICH: No, I'm not talking about an occupying force, I'm talking about a coalition that looks awfully like the coalition we had in the first Gulf War. It would involve our friends in the Middle East who want to contribute, also to our NATO allies, because we're not going to solve this problem with ISIS by just sitting back and delaying or dithering, which is what we've done.
GRAHAM: They better be, because if we don't destroy ISIL in Syria, which is their headquarters, we're going to get attacked at home. The entire region wants Assad gone, so there's an opportunity here with some American leadership to do two things, which is to destroy ISIL before we get hit at home and also to push Assad out and not give yet another Arab capital to Damascus.
Q: Robert Kagan wrote that the kind of operation that you are recommending could require 40,000 - 50,000 troops.
GRAHAM: I think it will require more than that, but the good news,10% of the force will come from Western powers. The force that we're talking about will come from regional armies from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey. They have regional armies. They would go into the fight if you put Assad on the table. They will pay for this war.
GRAHAM: I haven't been told that by anybody. The holding force would be the region. We're talking about region coming together with a Western component, 90 percent them, 10 percent us. The holding will be done by Sunni Arab states. We will turn to Assad and say, you must go. Russia and Iran will be on the outside looking in to an entire regional army, including Turkey, with Western elements. They will fold like a cheap suit.
HUCKABEE: After the attack in Mali, there were numerous reports that the gunmen were going around and saying, can you quote a verse from the Koran? If they said yes, they were allowed to go free. If they couldn't, they were shot. And so the point was is that, while the president has said we need to disarm law-abiding people, it was just a reminder that we are at war with radical Islam. It's not that we are at war with all Islam, but we are at war with those who believe that the purpose they have on earth is to declare a worldwide caliphate to kill all the infidels, which would mean everyone, including other Muslims, who don't agree to their harsh, intense, anti-woman, anti-human being approach to life and who want to take us back to the seventh century.
CHRISTIE: ISIS doesn't seem to be concerned about civilian casualties. We need to get real about this; we need to bring our allies together and revise rules of engagement to make sure that what we're doing is taking on ISIS in a significant, direct way that will be effective. So, this administration has no credibility in giving us any type of assessment of how this is going. We have the attacks in Mali now. Obama said al Qaeda was on the run. Obviously, that's wrong as well.
PAUL: I think the first thing we have to do is learn from our history. In the past several decades, if there's one true thing in the Middle East, it's that when we've toppled secular dictators, we've gotten chaos and the rise of radical Islam. So if we want a long lasting victory and peace, the boots on the ground are going to have to be Arab, and you're going to have to have Sunni Muslims defeating Sunni Muslims because even the Shiite Muslims can't occupy these Sunni cities. ISIS is essentially surrounded, but what we have to do is, we do need a ceasefire in Syria, and probably Russia's going to be part of that solution if we're willing to talk with them, but we also need to engage Turkey on one side. We need to engage the Kurds on one side.
BUSH: I think the president should convene the North American Council to discuss that. And I do think that it's worthy of consideration, for sure. If that's what the French want, as our longest and strongest and most loyal ally over our entire history, we should certainly consider it. Our hearts go out to the people of Paris and to France. This is the second time they have had an atrocious act of terror in their country. We need to show complete solidarity with them.
BUSH: No, I think we need to do both. We should declare war and harness all of the power that the United States can bring to bear both diplomatic and military, of course, to be able to take out ISIS. We need to declare a no-fly zone over Syria. Directly arm the Peshmerga forces in Iraq. Build up the Syrian Free Army. Re-engage with the Sunni tribal leaders. Embed with the Iraqi military. Be able to create safe zones in Syria. Garner the support of our European allies and the traditional Arab states. This a threat to Western civilization and we should consider it that way.
BUSH: You take it to them in Syria & Iraq. You destroy ISIS. And then you build a coalition to replace this radical Islamic terrorist threat to our country & to Europe & to the region with something that is more peace loving. We have to be engaged. This is not something you can contain. Each day that ISIS exists, it gains new energy and more recruits around the world.
BUSH: I tell the American public that a caliphate the size of Indiana garners strength each and every day if it's not taken out. 30,000 to 40,000 battle-tested soldiers that are organized to destroy our way of life. We have to be in this fight. There is no other option. And this threat can be contained, but more importantly, it'll never die unless it's destroyed. The policy of containment isn't going to work.
GRAHAM: I would form a regional army made of Arabs and Turks; American forces would be part of that army. We'd go in on the ground in Syria. We'd pull the caliphate up by the roots and we would take back land held by ISIL and hold it until Syria repairs itself. That requires American boots on the ground in Syria and we need more American boots on the ground in Iraq if we're going to protect the American homeland.
Q: If the Arabs such as Jordan and the Saudis and the UAE, Egypt, the Turks are eager to get in this fight, where are they?
GRAHAM: They're eager to get in the fight, but they're not going to go destroy ISIL unless we take a side out, too. To get a regional force, you have to accomplish two goals, to go in to destroy ISIL, which is a threat to the region, and also take out Assad, who is a puppet of Iran. Without putting Assad on the table, you're not going to be able to rally the region.
GRAHAM: Here's what I would do. I would tell the Russians that you're not going to use military force to keep Assad in power. That disrupts the region. It gives Iran more power at a time when they should have less. And the Syrian people are not going to accept Assad as their leader. So I would tell the Russians, if you want to fight for Assad, that will be your choice, but what you will be doing is fighting the entire world. And let Russia make a decision. And here's what they would do, they would back out.
GRAHAM: Absolutely. Here's what I believe, without adjusting our strategy the worst is yet to come when it comes to ISIL, that the Obama strategy regarding destroying ISIL is not working and will not work. I hope the French will invoke Article V. They should. The world should be at war with ISIL.
RUBIO: I don't think any nation on Earth takes more pains in avoiding civilian casualties than the United States. The reality, unfortunately, is that many of these terrorist groups deliberately operate from the center of civilian areas, because they want there to be civilian casualties for propaganda use. We've seen that as well used by the enemies of Israel on repeated occasions. Obviously, we're going to take great pains to avoid civilian casualties, but at the end of the day, no one has killed more civilians and more innocents here than ISIS has. And although we'll take extraordinary steps to avoid civilian casualties, there is, of course, no guarantee, especially, given the fact, that you're operating against these individuals, who have no regard for human life.
RUBIO: This is clearly an act of war on one of our NATO allies and we should invoke Article 5 of the NATO agreement and bring everyone together to put together a coalition to confront this challenge.
Q: The question is how--Senator Lindsey Graham, says put 10,000 troops on the ground.
RUBIO: I think it's premature to say the exact numbers. I think that we need to begin to work more closely with the Sunni tribes in Iraq who do not want to work under the thumb of the central government in Iraq as well as the Kurds. The only way to ultimately defeat ISIS is for them to be defeated ideologically and militarily, by Sunnis themselves. But we are going to have to increase special operations attacks, targeting ISIS leadership and revealing that they are not invincible.
"We have not led, and when you don't lead, you create doubt in the minds of our friends, and also, it encourages our enemies," he said. He said he'd support a larger US military presence in the region. "The time has come to destroy ISIS as part of a coalition," Kasich said. "And if that means that US boots have to be on the ground, so be it," he said. "Because to allow this to linger, to put this off, to think that somehow this is going to go away is naive at best."
Kasich said joining Russia in the fight against ISIS doesn't mean the US should set aside fights with Moscow over its incursion in Ukraine and its intervention in favor of Syrian leader.
FIORINA: Well, first of all, it's recognition that you cannot have a successful bombing campaign without people on the ground telling you where to place the bomb. So, he's sort of come to reality. On the other hand, it's too little too late. I think this is a reflection of the reality, that when America does not act, when we do not lead as we have not the last three years under this president, our options become very constrained and the situation becomes more dangerous.I'm glad he did this, but we still do not have a strategy in Syria. We do not have a strategy to deal with ISIS.
FIORINA: Well, you know, the president has said he doesn't believe in no-fly zones, but no fly zones are very effective. They have been effective in the past and we need to establish one. We need to make it crystal clear to Vladimir Putin that our jets will fly when and where they want, that our troops cannot be threatened in any way by Russia. And it is why, as president of the United States, in addition to having a strategy in Syria and for ISIS, I would also be rebuilding the Sixth Fleet, right under Vladimir Putin's nose, rebuilding the missile defence program in Poland, so he must see strength and resolve from the United States of America.
GRAHAM: Here's what I've said, I intend to destroy ISIL. They want three things: they want to purify the Islamic faith and take it back to the 1100s, they want to destroy the state of Israel the attack infidels like us. President Obama said he will degrade and destroy ISIL. Sending 50 American Special Forces into Syria shows that Obama is not all in, it is a sign of weakness to ISIL. And to our allies, sending 50 troops means that we're not committed to destroying ISIL. And if we're not committed to destroying ISIL, they will attack us here. These 50 American special operators are going into a very bad spot with no chance of winning and at the end of the day, this will not destroy ISIL.
"We already have terrain to defend--the United States and our outposts overseas--and we cannot afford to expand this territory in a manner that would simply give the enemy more targets." He wraps up with this: "If a treaty does not obligate us, if American forces are not under attack or under threat of imminent attack, if no Americans are at risk, the President should come to the congress before he or she sends troops into Harm's Way."
Kasich said the zones would provide refuge for Syrians fleeing the 4-year-old civil war that has killed a quarter million people and displaced an estimated 4 million. He suggested regional assistance from Turkey, Jordan and the Kurds and said the administration should encourage European allies to help enforce any no-fly zones. "A no-fly zone can be very, very effective if it's enforced," he said.
CARSON: I would use every resource available to us, which includes financial resources, covert operations, Special Forces, and ground troops if necessary. Because it's unlikely that a coalition will form behind nothing.
In terms of going into Syria, I think we need to push them out of Iraq, which is the largest part of the caliphate ISIS has established. We also can't let them continue to control Anbar, one of the largest energy fields. I would be in favor of pushing them up into Syria. There's a very complex situation in Syria. You have the Russians coming in there now and establishing themselves. You have China starting to do the same. You want to be very, very careful before you jump into the middle of that situation.
Q: So you're one of those that says, "Let Assad and ISIS fight it out amongst themselves, and then clean up the mess later?"
CARSON: That is certainly something to consider.
A: Yes there is.I think they (Senate Republicans) ought to go to the nuclear option in the United States Senate, that being that they should declare this a big constitutional issue and whether this agreement is put into effect or not, it ought to be decided by 51 votes, not by 60 votes or some filibuster. When it comes to this treaty, one which I so strongly oppose, I think the Republicans in the senate ought to say that we are not going to permit this to be blocked because of a filibuster.
SANDERS: No. I voted also for the war in Afghanistan, because I believed that Osama bin Laden needed to be captured, needed to be brought to trial.
Q: Yes, sir, I apologize for that, yes, you did.
SANDERS: But I am very concerned about a lot of the war talk that I'm hearing from my Republican colleagues, who apparently have forgotten the cost of war and the errors made in Afghanistan and Iraq. And what I believe, very much, is that the most powerful military on Earth, the United States of America, that our government should do everything that we can to resolve international conflict in a way that does not require war.
KASICH: I think we absolutely have to spend more on defense. It's one of the essential purposes of the federal government. But I have served on defense for 18 years and being able to witness the waste, the duplication, the red tape, the slowdown, we don't want to spend money there that goes in the bureaucracy and delay that could go into building a stronger defense. There's no inconsistency there: reform the Pentagon, strengthen the military. That's why I call myself the cheap hawk.
A: America has permanently settled some 70,000 refugees, many of which are from Syria. Throughout the last several years, we put some $4 billion into humanitarian relief to help with the Syrian crisis. America is leading but at some point, you can't just look at the symptoms. You've got to address the problem and the problem is squarely with ISIS and it's with Assad.[President Obama] is not allowing our military personnel to do what they're trained to do, if we would just lift the political restrictions, empower the over 3,000 troops that are there to do what they're trained to do to help the Kurd and the Sunni allies reclaim the territory taken by ISIS.
I think the Jordanians, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, the Kurds and the Egyptians are all fighting ISIS, as we speak, on the ground. They know this is their fight. Yes, they need leadership, resolve support and material from us. We haven't provided any of it. And if we did, it will make a big difference.
In an interview on "State of the Union," Kasich said, "I would never have committed ourselves to Iraq." Kasich said the US "should've left a base in Iraq" instead of withdrawing troops in 2011.
But in November 2002, Kasich, then a former congressman, made a very different argument during an event at The Ohio State University, as the US was gearing up for war in Iraq. "We should go to war with Iraq. It's not likely that (Saddam) Hussein will give up his weapons. If he did he would be disgraced in the Arab world," he said then.
Kasich's 2002 comments, in front of a crowd of 100 students, were reported at the time by The Lantern, Ohio State's student newspaper, under the headline: "Fireside speaker favors war with Iraq."
A: Well, we should have had a base left in Iraq, for sure.
Q: But do you think that President George W. Bush, who launched the attack initially on Iraq, bears some responsibility for ISIS now?
A: I would have never committed ourselves to Iraq. And, as you can see, ultimately, it's going to end up being divided into three parts. I think the Kurds are great allies of ours. And we have got to very conscious of some of the things that they need and balance that off against the Turks, because that's become an issue over there. But all the religions of the world ought to stand up and say, "you blow up innocent men, women, and children, and you think you're going to paradise, there's something wrong with you, you're nuts, and if we catch you, we're going to throw you into prison, maybe for the rest of your life."
A: Let's talk the facts of the deal. We shouldn't be getting the hyperbole. The fact that we have to wait 24 days to inspect a site if the Iranians object is outrageous. That would be like me getting a search warrant, coming to somebody's house who I think is committing a crime and saying, here, I have got a search warrant, I will be back in 24 days to search.
Q: Well, if it was a radioactive crime, the inspectors say that they would be able to discern whether or not there was radioactive material there 24 days later.
A: The president promised any time anywhere. And you cannot tell me that, in 24 days, the Iranians cannot move the elements of cheating from one area to another.
A: I know the cost of war. I know I've seen it on the face of these young warriors and on their families. And before we ever send our young men and women into combat, we need to use every tool that we have.
Q: Do you think we've exhausted every measure possible before doing that [in Syria and Iraq to fight ISIS]?
A: I don't have all the intelligence. I would suggest we need a coalition of those Gulf States, of Saudi, of Jordan, of the Egyptians, the Turks, the Israelis--we cannot affect ISIS without having personnel on the ground in a direct combat role
A: The sanctions are already in place. And they would be reinstated. And that's what I would do as president. You don't need to have a Cabinet fully formed to do that. We will not use the national security waiver to hold back US sanctions against Iran, especially not as a result of this flawed deal that he's pursuing. I think that the sanctions were actually forcing Iran to the table. I think we should have asked for a lot more. It also requires us to help Iran technically, economically, develop themselves as a country and become a stronger regional power. That undermines our relationships with our Arab allies in the region and, of course, the state of Israel. I think it almost guarantees that there will now be an arms race in the Middle East.
WEBB: Well, we go through these cycles whenever we have extended ground commitments. We've done it three or four times in my adult life. I have a great deal of confidence, particularly in Joe Dunford, who's now going to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I don't think that the military leadership would be backing anything that they don't believe can work.
Q: So do you support it?
WEBB: No, I agree with the notion that ground forces are reduced when our extended ground commitments go down. But I don't know the numbers. I'd have to take a look and see where they are.
WEBB: The long term solution to the ISIS problem is going to have to come from the Sunni leadership in the region. In the interim period, we need to define specifically what our national security interests are and how we can bring them about. I don't think you're going to get there with us training these opposition forces in that way. It didn't work very well a few years ago before IS showed up. But in terms of our national security interests, I think you're seeing some impact.
A: The only way you're going to beat them is that. You know why they're rich? Because they have the oil.
Q: But I don't think the government of Iraq would want us to bomb their oil fields.
A: There is no government in Iraq. The so-called government in Iraq went to Iran to meet with Iran. Iran is going to take over Iraq. That's as simple as that. I don't care about the government of Iraq. They're totally corrupt. Who cares?
We spent $2 trillion in Iraq, $2 trillion. We lost thousands of lives, thousands in Iraq. We have wounded soldiers all over the place, thousands and thousands of wounded soldiers. And we have nothing. We can't even go there. We have nothing. And every time we give Iraq equipment, the first time a bullet goes off in the air, they leave it.
Last week, I read 2,300 Humvees--these are big vehicles--were left behind for the enemy. 2,300 sophisticated vehicles, they ran, and the enemy took them.
Rick Perry continued to highlight his executive experience in his criticism of the president's ISIS policy. "Positive rhetoric alone does not solve problems, action does," he said in a statement. "If I were Commander-in-Chief, it would not take nine months to work with our military leaders to develop a complete strategy to destroy ISIS and protect American security interests and values."
One of Perry's talking points has been his record of decisive action rather than promises and speeches. In his campaign launch on June 4, he advocated for a tougher approach to Russia and Iran, declaring, "This will be a 'show-me, don't tell me' election, where voters will look past the rhetoric to the real record."
Scott Walker seized the opportunity to attack Obama. He emphasized that American troops should play a larger role in the fight against the Islamic State terror group and that the president should reach out more to Kurds and Sunnis for cooperation. "For political reasons, President Obama isn't willing to expand the role of American troops," said the Wisconsin governor in a statement posted on the website of his Our American Revival PAC. "Politics should never dictate what needs to be done to ensure our safety and ensure victory when we deploy military power."
RUBIO: Well, not only would I have not been in favor of it, President Bush would not have been in favor of it. And he said so.
Q: So, it made sense to invade Iraq in 2003, but now you say it was a mistake?
RUBIO: That was not the same question. The question was whether it was a mistake. And my answer was it's not a mistake. I still say it was not a mistake, because the president was presented with intelligence that said Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, it was governed by a man who had committed atrocities in the past with weapons of mass destruction.
There has to be the threat of military force. But my hope is really that negotiations continue. There are some in my party who say, "Oh, I don't want any negotiations." They're ready to be done with it. But once you're done with negotiations, the choices are war, or they get a weapon, and I don't want to have just those two binary choices.
A: Knowing what I know now, no. Reagan used to say trust and verify. In regard to Iran, it should be verify, verify, verify, without the trust, because I don't trust them.
Q: And you don't think the administration has done that or tried to do that?
A: I think they have fallen in love with this deal. I think a lot of it is about a legacy. I do not like this agreement, what I have read so far.
CHAFEE: Well, I enjoyed working with Sen. Clinton. We overlapped for six years and we served on the environment and public works committee together. But that vote for the Iraq war, that was a moment in time where the Vietnam era had ended, the Berlin wall come down. There was lasting peace ahead of us if we made good decisions particularly after September 11th when people were angry and they were scared. And that was just a moment in time where the premise for going into Iraq was so false that there were weapons of mass destruction--she didn't do her homework and we live with the ramifications today. And so you may say that's 12 years ago, but if you show lack of judgment, lack of doing your homework then, what can we expect in the future?
PAUL: Occasionally, I can be partisan, but, on this, I don't think I would jump to the conclusion that, all of a sudden, the ayatollah of Iran is telling the truth, and my government is lying to us. Now, the biggest problem we have right now is that every time there is a hint of an agreement, the Iranian foreign minister tweets out in English that the agreement doesn't mean what our government says it means. So I keep an open mind as to who is telling the truth. It is very, very damaging to the American public, and to the details of this agreement, if we can't trust the sincerity or the credibility of the Iranian government
Q: So, at this point, you have an open mind about this?
PAUL: Yes. I want peace. I want negotiations. I don't want another war. But I also want a good agreement.
There are two million Christians in Syria. And you know what? If you asked them who would they choose, they would all choose Assad over ISIS, because they see the barbarity of perhaps both. But they see the utter depravity and barbarity of ISIS. And so bombing Assad probably isn't a good policy.
Well, that's all they'll let me attach it to. But I forced them to debate. And I think that's one of the things to me that has been most exciting about being in the Senate, is I could be at home saying, "Congress should declare war," and, "Why won't Congress get involved?"
But now, I'm actually there. And I can say, "You know what? I'll make them vote on this. And they will have to discuss war." And they did. We had a great discussion. It didn't come to a resolution, but I'm still pushing to say, "Look, you should not be at war." And in fact, I've said the president, if he wanted to be a great leader last August should have come before a joint session of Congress and laid out the plan.
Paul's support for the Kurds includes giving them more weapons, but he doesn't feel the same about Syrian rebels for reasons that include fear the arms would land in the hands of extremists. He also insists the Obama administration was wrong to intervene in Libya.
O`MALLEY: The greatest danger that we face right now on a consistent basis in terms of manmade threats is nuclear Iran and related to that, extremist violence. I don't think you can separate the two. I think they go together. We have to confront both of these issues, and it starts with supporting the president in achieving that negotiated settlement.
Then, at last, a slight stroke of good luck. Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized the letter--and maybe, implicitly, Jindal--on Twitter. "No one considering running for commander-in-chief should be signing on," she wrote.
Jindal seized the moment. "@HillaryClinton No one who allows Iran to become a nuclear power should consider running," he tweeted back. He was in the conversation. "News Alert: Bobby Jindal and Hillary Clinton tussle on Twitter," Jindal's political advisers wrote in a news release.
To Jindal's advisers, there is a method in all this activity: Jindal is not searching for a political identity. He is showing his range.
CARSON: Well, first of all, recognize that ISIS and some of the other radical Islamic terrorist groups -and let's not forget about the Shia which are based in Iran-- are responsible for a lot of terrorism. They would like to destroy us and our way of life. We have a couple of options. We can sit back and say, "Nah, they're not that big a deal," or we can recognize that the longer we allow them to grow, to spread, to root, get their roots well established, the more difficult it will be to eradicate them later. So what I mean is we have to eradicate them now. We have to use every means possible to do that. And we certainly don't want to have people who know very little about military strategy micromanaging a very competent military that we have.
HUCKABEE: Well, first of all, we should have been long ago arming the Kurds. They're the most reliable force that we have in the Middle East, especially in the northern part of Iraq, that is willing and ready to fight ISIS and to do it without American blood being spilled. We have not kept our promise to the Kurds. The second thing we should do is make sure that, wherever there's an ISIS target, that we bomb the daylights out of it. We make it unpopular to join ISIS, because we need to let them know, they basically sign on to a death sentence if they want to join this hideous, savage, uncivilized group of people who think it's OK to burn people alive and cut their heads off, and not only to do it, but I think what is most despicable is that they are proud of it: They videotape it. They show it to the world. They want us to see what they do. And that makes it even more horrifying.
HUCKABEE: We don't leave anything off the table. But if they're going to be boots, they have to be more than just U.S. boots. There's got to be some boots that from come from the Saudis, the Jordanians and others.
WALKER: I believe we should not take any action off the table. I don't want to run into the war. But I don't want any of [our soldiers] to have died in vain. I think when we look at that and say there's radical Islamic terrorism, it's like a virus, we needed to be prepared to do what it takes to make sure it doesn't spread.
Q: You say you wouldn't take anything off the table, but that doesn't quite answer my question. Would you commit US ground forces?
WALKER: For me to do something like that would require a number of things. Listening to the chain of command, particularly the Joint Chiefs, your national security advisers and others, as to what's necessary and listening to the people who are actually out in the field is the best way to do that. But then also bring together a coalition. Certainly, reaffirming our major asset, our major ally in the region, that being Israel, but also our other allies around the world.
The former Florida governor called non-state terrorist groups such as the Islamic State "perhaps the greatest security threat that we now face for our own homeland."
He added, "Taking them out is the strategy."
Over the course of his brother's presidency, Bush frequently expressed support for the war. As the Iraq conflict began in 2003, he [said of his brother] "in his heart, I know he is doing what he thinks is right, and I concur with him." He visited Iraq with other Republican governors in April 2006 to visit US troops. Nearing the 10th anniversary of the start of the war, Bush said that "history will be kind to my brother, the further out you get from this and the more people compare his tenure to what's going on now."
CRUZ: We have boots on the ground already with the Kurds. But our government is not providing military weapons effectively to the Kurds. Instead, they're shuttling it all to Baghdad, and Baghdad is very slow in getting it to the Kurds.
Q: But if that's not enough, would you be willing to send American ground troops into that battle?
CRUZ: Look, we need to accomplish the mission and the mission should be defeating ISIS before they succeed in carrying out more horrific acts of terror. If need be, we should go that step. The problem is, right now, the Obama-Clinton-Kerry foreign policy has been consistently wrong on ISIS. Our photo-op foreign policy, where we drop a bomb here or a missile there. We need a focused, direct military objective of taking out and destroying ISIS.
CRUZ: She said she did not believe there was any prospect for Ukraine to be successful in defending itself against Russian aggression. I think that's mistaken. What [Obama and Merkel are] doing with regard to Ukraine and with regard to Russia makes no sense, and it isn't working. It is long past time for us to step forward and provide defensive weapons, so that the men and women of Ukraine can defend their nation. They are our allies. We committed ourselves to standing with Ukraine to defend their territorial integrity.
Q: Should the US arm the Ukraine over the objections of the Germans?
CRUZ: What we're seeing is, when America doesn't lead, Europe can't be expected to step into the breach. What is missing from this is the president of the US. I'm part of a large bipartisan congressional delegation that is united on the need for us to provide defensive arms to Ukraine.
CRUZ: We met today with the president of Kurdistan. The Kurds on the ground are fantastic fighters. The Peshmerga have been our allies. And they're actually fighting every day to stop ISIS. Now, what makes no sense whatsoever is, the Obama administration is refusing to directly arm the Kurds. We need to arm the Kurds now because they are our boots on the ground. I don't believe it is necessary to put American boots on the ground if we are arming the Peshmerga. The Peshmerga on the ground, combined with overwhelming American airpower, can take out ISIS.
Q: So some in the Pentagon who apparently are considering about 10,000 U.S. troops on the ground, that would be a bad move?
CRUZ: In my view, American boots on the ground should always be the last step, and we need to exercise other steps before that. We have the availability of overwhelming airpower, and we have boots on the ground that are ready and eager to fight.
Paul said Hillary Clinton was to blame for what he described as foreign-policy failures: she was a proponent of interventions during popular uprisings against the ruling regimes in Libya and Syria. "Hillary's war in Libya has been an utter disaster," Paul said. "There are now jihadists roaming all across Libya. It's a jihadist wonderland."
The US was part of an international coalition to oust Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi from power in 2011. "Gadhafi was a secular dictator," Paul said. "Not the kind of guy that we want to have representing us in country, but he was secular. He didn't like radical Islam, and he kept them down because they were a threat to him. What happened when we toppled the secular dictator? Chaos. More radical Islam."
In Syria, Paul said that Islamic State--a militant group operating in Syria and Iraq that is also known as ISIS--was essentially created by the US aid program under the Obama administration. "I think we have to do something about ISIS," he said. "But, you know why we're doing something and why we have to be there again? Because of a failed foreign policy that got us involved in a Syrian Civil War. By supporting the Islamic rebels, ISIS grew stronger and stronger. And now we have to go back."
Bush received a draft number of 26 on a calendar-based scale that went to 365, earning him a "1A" classification that meant he likely would have been drafted if the war continued at full pace. But he avoided such a fate because the war was winding down--a fact for which some credit was due those of his generation who participated in protests that he had refused to join.
WALKER: Well, I'd go back to the red line [that Obama defined against use of chemical weapons].
Q: Let's not go back. Let's go forward. What is your big, bold idea in Syria?
WALKER: I think aggressively, we need to take the fight to ISIS and any other radical Islamic terrorist in and around the world, because it's not a matter of IF they attempt an attack on American soil, but it's WHEN. We need leadership that says clearly, not only amongst the United States but amongst our allies, that we're willing to take appropriate action. I think it should be surgical.
Q: You don't think 2,000 air strikes is taking it to ISIS in Syria and Iraq?
WALKER: I think we need to have an aggressive strategy anywhere around the world.
WALKER: I think we need to have an aggressive strategy anywhere around the world.
Q: I don't know what "aggressive" strategy means.
WALKER: I think anywhere and everywhere, we have to go beyond just aggressive air strikes. We have to look at other surgical methods. And ultimately, we have to be prepared to put boots on the ground if that's what it takes, because I think--
Q: Boots on the ground in Syria? U.S. boots on the ground in Syria?
WALKER: I don't think that is an immediate plan, but I think anywhere in the world--
Q: But you would not rule that out?
WALKER: I wouldn't rule anything out. I think when you have the lives of Americans at stake and our freedom loving allies anywhere in the world, we have to be prepared to do things that don't allow those measures, those attacks, those abuses to come to our shores.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM: Well, once you liberate a country like Iraq, and you don't have a follow-up force, they fill in the gaps. Syria is a terror state. The civil war in Syria basically broke the country apart. And the only thing I can say is you have to deny the enemy safe haven. Returning from Iraq prematurely was a mistake. Not supporting the Free Syrian Army three or four years ago was a mistake. You've got to stay after these guys.
Q: What do you tell the country that's war-weary?
GRAHAM: You need to fight them over there or they're coming back here. It's better to partner than it is to go it alone. You've got to show the ability to stay with it. You try to get partners. The Free Syrian Army would be a good partner.
GRAHAM: The answer now is to deny ISIL the safe haven they enjoy in Syria and Iraq because it is a platform to strike the United States. There are more [more terror attacks like in] Paris coming until you disrupt this network. There are more terrorist organizations with more safe havens, with more capability to hit the homeland than before 9/11. The answer is to form a regional coalition, America has to be part of it, go in on the ground, and get these guys out of Syria. The current strategy is failing. Everybody has told us on this trip that if you don't have a no-fly zone, the people we're training, the Free Syrian Army that we're training is going to go back into Syria and get slaughtered by Assad. There's no way to be successful on the ground without neutralizing Assad's air advantage. And so we need a no-fly zone desperately.
GRAHAM: I think we're trying to tell the Iranians that we would like a political negotiation, a diplomatic solution, but please understand in Iran that the Congress is intent on re-apply sanctions, if you walk away from the negotiating table, and if you cheat, I don't think that's a disruptive message. All we're telling the Iranians, "If you walk away from these negotiations, sanctions will be reapplied. If you cheat, they will be reimposed." But let me just say this. I'm willing to forgo sanctions if the president will take any deal he negotiates and brings it to Congress for our approval.
ROMNEY: The right course for this nation is to do whatever it takes to destroy and defeat ISIS. And it's appropriate for us to provide support to the Iraqi military & intelligence. And I think the President's wrong in saying that under no circumstances will he consider ground troops. No one wants to put their own ground troops there. But if you're going to defeat something, you don't tell the enemy exactly what you plan on doing or what you won't do. You say "we're going to defeat you regardless of the consequence."
Q: So if it comes to it that we may have to send American fighting forces, not just advisors?
ROMNEY: Well, no one wants that. But when the President says "we're going to destroy ISIS," it doesn't mean "well, we'll destroy it only in the following ways." You say instead we're going to do whatever it takes to destroy ISIS.
CRUZ: Well, unfortunately, the approach of the Obama administration to ISIS has been fundamentally unserious. We have dropped a bomb here, a missile there, but it has really been a photo op foreign policy. What we need is a concentrated, directive military objective to take ISIS out. Now, what does that entail? A far more vigorous air campaign than we're seeing. We're dropping a fraction of the ordnance that we have in other campaigns such as Afghanistan.
Q: Do you think it will involve US troops?
CRUZ: Well, there are over 1,500 on the ground right now. But we have a tremendous asset on the ground right now, which is the Kurds, [whom we should arm].
CRUZ: Well, there are over 1,500 on the ground right now. But we have a tremendous asset on the ground right now, which is the Kurds. The Peshmerga have been strong allies of the US. They are effective fighters. And they desperately need weaponry and assistance. And, for whatever reason, the Obama administration has been delaying aiding the Peshmerga, has been running it all through Baghdad, instead of aiding them directly, and has been blocking them from selling oil, which doesn't make sense. And the Obama administration keeps focusing on Syrian rebels, many of whom have far too close ties to radical Islamic terrorists for it to make any sense for us to be supporting them. The Kurds are allies and they are boots on the ground. And when we work with them in concert, they're ready to fight on the front line, along with serious airpower. If it were a military objective to take ISIS out, I think that's what we would be doing.
SANDERS: ISIS is a brutal, awful, dangerous army and they have got to be defeated. But this is not just an American problem. This is an international crisis. This is a regional crisis. And I think the people of America are getting sick and tired of the world and the region, Saudi Arabia and the other countries saying "hey, we don't have to do anything about it. The American taxpayer, the American soldiers will do all the work for us." Most people don't know is that Saudi Arabia is the 4th largest defense spender in the world, more than the U.K., more than France. They have an army which is probably seven times larger than ISIS. They have a major air force.
Q: Sure. But they have shown no sign at all that they want to go in and neither have the Jordanians.
SANDERS: The question that we have got to ask is why are the nations in the region not more actively involved? Why don't they see this as a crisis situation?
SANDERS: No. It has to be an international effort.
Q: Would you support arming the Peshmerga, the Kurdish forces?
SANDERS: Yes. I think we should arm them--even that's a difficult issue to make sure that the people that we arm today don't turn against us tomorrow. But I think providing arms for those people who we can trust and providing air support is in fact something we should be doing.
Q: Would it be confined to the Peshmerga? I know that you voted against arming and training Syrian rebels. So is there a difference to you between the Peshmerga and the Syrian rebels?
SANDERS: We have been at war for 12 years. We have spent trillions of dollars. We have 500,000 young men and women who have come up--come home with PTSD and TBI. What I do not want and I fear very much is the US getting sucked into a quagmire and being involved in perpetual warfare year after year after year. That is my fear.
WEBB: If you look at what's going on right now, there are two data points I think that are critical. The first was the decision by the Bush administration to invade and occupy Iraq. Which empowered Iran and unleashed all the sectarian violence. And then it was what I thought was a strategic, the inadvisable strategy of the Arab Spring. And what has happened in Libya as well as Syria as a result.
WEBB: Now if you take a look at Syria, and these other parts of Iraq, we now have a situation where we're asking these freedom fighters, or whatever you want to call them, who were going after Assad, to help us go after ISIS. The elements that are fighting there are very fluid in terms of the people who declare their alliances. I would be willing to bet that we had people at the top of ISIS who actually have been trained by Americans at some point.
GRAHAM: There's been some. The idea of hitting them in Syria is long overdue. But this strategy of aerial bombardment is not going to work to destroy ISIL. We have a series of half- measures with ISIL that are going to draw this conflict out, and will not lead to the ISIL's destruction.
Q: That includes US ground troops?
GRAHAM: I think most Americans understand, if we don't destroy ISIL, if they survive our best shot, that we are all less safe. And you cannot destroy ISIL in Syria without a ground component. And what we're doing with the Free Syrian Army is militarily unsound. There is no way that I can see how we fix the problem in Iraq and Syria without American ground troops. So, Mr. President, level with the American people. You need boots on the ground. American soldiers need to go back to Syria and Iraq as part of a coalition. And we're going to need more than 4,000 to destroy ISIL in Iraq and Syria.
GRAHAM: We did.
Q: But if we did, then wasn't the president's decision OK? Why should we have stayed in Iraq?
GRAHAM: Every military commander said we needed between 10,000 & 20,000 troops. President Obama wanted zero. He said he promised to end the war. Well, what he did is, he lost the war, and this has come back to haunt us. I hope the next president will understand, listen to your commanders. And ISIL is a result of these mistakes.
KING: No, so far we're not. And where I disagree with the president on this--to me, attacking ISIS in Syria is in our national interest. Now if we can get allies, if we can get a coalition together, that's fine, and we should work on it. But we can't be beholden to a coalition because we're not doing this out of humanitarian purposes and quite frankly we're not doing it for the people of Syria or Iraq. Ultimately we're doing it because it's in our national interest to do so. And if that's the case, we can't be holding back. We should attack and strike and do all we can to the command and control centers that ISIS has in Syria. That is a key component of ISIS located in Syria so we shouldn't be waiting for other countries.
KING: I think it's a terrible mistake. Iran is powerful enough. Ultimately they are the main threat in that part of the world, and to be doing anything at all to build them up, to give them sanctuary, to in effect have them on our side, what does that do to Israel? What does that do to their nuclear development in plan? I think it weakens our position. I cannot understand why we want to get Iran involved.
The president said absolutely no US boots on the ground in a combat role. Will US forces at some point have to get involved in some kind of a combat role?
KING: Well, we already have American troops on the ground. We have Special Forces there. They are obviously in harm's way. And I don't see how ultimately we can avoid putting combat troops on the ground in some capacity. But more than that, I don't know why the president says up front that we're not going to put boots on the ground. Don't take anything off the table.
"Intervention is a mistake. Intervention when both sides are evil is a mistake. Intervention that destabilizes the Middle East is a mistake. And yet, here we are again, wading into a civil war," Paul said.
His doubts ran contrary to the thinking of Rubio, who advocated an aggressive response, saying the threat should have been addressed earlier. "If we do not confront and defeat ISIL now we will have to do so later, and it will take a lot longer, be a lot costlier, and be more painful," Rubio said, using an acronym for Islamic State. "If we fail to approve this, the nations of that region will say America is not truly engaged."
"Intervention is a mistake. Intervention when both sides are evil is a mistake. Intervention that destabilizes the Middle East is a mistake. And yet, here we are again, wading into a civil war," Paul said.
His doubts ran contrary to the thinking of Rubio, who advocated an aggressive response, saying the threat should have been addressed earlier. "If we do not confront and defeat ISIL now we will have to do so later, and it will take a lot longer, be a lot costlier, and be more painful," Rubio said, using an acronym for Islamic State. "If we fail to approve this, the nations of that region will say America is not truly engaged."
"Intervention is a mistake. Intervention when both sides are evil is a mistake. And yet, here we are again, wading into a civil war," Paul said. His doubts ran contrary to the thinking of Rubio, who advocated an aggressive response.
The debate over arming the rebels to fight the spread of Islamic State has exposed long-brewing schisms for Republicans: A divide between proponents of a muscular American foreign policy, like Rubio and Cruz, vs. advocates of a scaled-back international presence, like Paul.
RUBIO: Absolutely. I think it's critical that we do that. If you're serious about defeating ISIL, you have to go after where they're headquartered. What is important to understand about their presence in Syria is that they are generating revenue in Syria, with former Assad refineries that they now control and they're generating revenue from. But all of their supplies, their command and control structure, is being operated from there. You cannot defeat ISIL unless you hit them in those parts of Syria that they now control, where the Syrian government is not even present. ISIL is a group that poses an immediate danger to the United States. And if we are serious about defeating them, then we must strike them both in Syria and in Iraq.
RUBIO: Well, if you recall, at that time, what the president characterized basically as a symbolic military action against the Assad government, which I thought would be counterproductive. I thought the best way to topple Assad was to arm, equip, train and capacitate moderate rebel elements within Syria. I thought that was a better approach. This is different. We're talking about targeting ISIL, which is a group that poses an immediate danger to the United States. And if we are serious about defeating them, then we must strike them both in Syria and in Iraq. The previous debate was about what to do with Assad, and I thought the best way to topple Assad was not through airstrikes, but through equipping the moderate rebel elements.
CRUZ (ON TAPE): What we ought to have is a direct concerted overwhelming air campaign to take them out.
Q (END TAPE): In Iraq and Syria?
CRUZ: The focus should be Iraq, but the real focus should be taking out ISIS. Within Syria, it should not be our objective to try to resolve the civil war in Syria.
Q: You said that the U.S. should bomb ISIS back into the Stone Age. Should that take Congressional approval?
CRUZ: It should absolutely take Congressional approval, I think.
Q (voice-over): But not all Republicans agree. On Friday, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida sent a letter to the White House saying the president doesn't need Congress, he should act swiftly on his own. What advice would you give the president?
CRUZ: I think it is an urgent concern to strike while ISIS is vulnerable.
If ISIS is not stopped in the Middle East, Perry said, its terrorists could end up coming across what he called an "unsecured" Southwest border. In fact, Perry asserted, "there is a very real possibility" they could already be coming, although he said there is "no clear evidence" that they are. "There's the obvious great concern that, because of the position of the border from the standpoint of it not being secure, and us not knowing who is penetrating across, that individuals from ISIS or other terrorist states could be," Perry said.
In response to a question about whether he advocates sending U.S. ground troops back into Iraq, the governor said that all options should be kept open. "They (ISIS) need to be eliminated, and they need to be eliminated now," Perry said.
The governor said he understands that President Obama is being warned by advisers and fellow Democrats about the danger of "mission creep" by sending U.S. military forces back into Iraq. But Perry said Obama should be more worried about ISIS' definition of "mission creep"--an attack against the United States.
GRAHAM: I'm hearing there may be some Israelis casualties coming from the tunnels where they come out into Israel. But my view of the Israeli operation: Stay as long as you need to stay, go wherever you need to go, do deal with a viper's nest called Hamas. If I were Israel, I would stay in Gaza as long as I needed to, to stop the rockets for good.
Q: When you see a ground operation moving in this direction, resulting in heavier Israeli casualties, do you have any words of caution for Israel?
GRAHAM: My only words to the Israeli government and people is, "Clear it out. Close the tunnels. Shut down the rocket sites. Stay as long as you need to stay." Over 1,500 rockets have been fired. The only reason they have as few Israeli casualties is because of Iron Dome [missile defense]. If it's left up to Hamas, thousands of Israelis would be dead.
GRAHAM: [The administration] didn't call Putin the thug that he is. He didn't call for arming the Ukraine so they can defend themselves against rebel separatists supported by Russia. How about sanctions that would hit Putin as an individual? Their energy sector, their banking sector. The Europeans are never going to lead on this issue. It is indispensable that America lead.
Q: Obama would say that's a knee-jerk response to call for a more robust military reaction.
GRAHAM: Nothing knee-jerk is going on here. Indecision reigns. President Obama is trying to be deliberative. It comes off as indecisive. He's trying to be thoughtful. It comes off as weakness. I'm suggesting European, American-organized sanctions that go after Putin individually. I'm suggesting we put more NATO troops around Ukraine, that we rebuild the missile defense systems that Obama took down to let Putin know the path of least resistance is not to continue to dismember the Ukraine
I disagree with Sen. Paul's representation of what America should be doing, and when you read his op-ed, he talks about basically, what I consider to be, isolationist policies.
RUBIO: Without a doubt. I think this is an urgent counterterrorism matter. I know a lot has been talked about the future of Iraq as a country, and that is a very legitimate issue that needs to be looked at. But, for me, this is not about nation-building or imposing democracy. This is a counterterrorism risk that we need to nip in the bud. It is my view that we will either deal with ISIS now or we will deal with them later. And, later, they're going to be stronger and harder to reach.
Q: Given that this is a direct throat to U.S. national security, what should this administration be doing?
RUBIO: I certainly hope that the 300 additional special forces and trainers going in is not simply a symbolic measure. I hope it's the first step in a multistep process.
PAUL: I see mostly confusion and chaos, and I think some of the chaos is created from getting involved in the Syrian civil war. You have to realize that some of the Islamic rebels that we have been supporting are actually allies of the group that is now in Iraq causing all of this trouble.
Q: ISIS, as a terrorist organization, has been billed by many as a clear and present danger. Do you see that?
PAUL: I look at it on a personal basis. I ask, "Do I want to send one of my sons, or your son, to fight to regain Mosul?" And I think, "Well ya, these are nasty terrorists, we should want to kill them." But I think, "Who should want to stop them more? Maybe the people who live there." Should not the Shiites, the Maliki government, should they not stand up? Yes, we should prevent them from exporting terror; but, I'm not so sure where the clear-cut, American interest is.
PAUL: Was the war won in 2005, when many of these people said it was won? They didn't really understand the civil war that would break out. And what's going on now, I don't blame on Obama. Has he really got the solution? Maybe there is no solution. But I do blame the Iraq War on the chaos that is in the Middle East. I also blame those who are for the Iraq War for emboldening Iran. These are the same people now who are petrified of what Iran may become, and I understand some of their worry.
Q: You're not a "Dick Cheney Republican" when it comes to American power in the Middle East?
PAUL: What I would say is that the war emboldened Iran. Iran is much more of a threat because of the Iraq War than they were before--before there was a standoff between Sunnis and Shiites--now there is Iranian hegemony throughout the region.
He went on to say that military tactics so far have not seemed to help. "It's clear that the military option has not worked. You've had military interventions now throughout the entire Middle East," he said. "You see the results: complete and utter chaos." He also argues that America's involvement was the result of a devious strategy to escalate a minor political irritant into a major concern for Americans. Baraka concluded, "We have to make a determination: whose interests are we in fact supporting when we support these ventures to these foreign countries?"
GRAHAM: Economic instability that comes from a collapsed Iraq will affect gas prices and our economic recovery. But the main reason is, if ISIS is not dealt with, that's the staging area for a new attack on the United States. They have a lot of wealth. They will plan an attack against our country. And my biggest fear is that they're going to march toward Jordan. And I hope America understands that, if the king of Jordan goes, if he's the victim of these guys, then the whole Mideast is in turmoil.
Q: And you really thinks that's possible?
GRAHAM: Yes.
Q: What makes you think they have the organization to pull something like that off?
GRAHAM: What makes you think they don't? Look what's happened. They have basically occupied a portion of Syria. They're going into Baghdad. They will consolidate economic and military power. They will march towards Jordan and Lebanon. And they will use that space to attack us.
GRAHAM: We have common interests.
Q: Does that make you feel comfortable?
GRAHAM: No. Hell no, it doesn't. Why did we deal with Stalin? Because he was not as bad as Hitler. The Iranians can provide some assets to make sure Baghdad doesn't fall. We need to coordinate with the Iranians. And the Turks need to get in the game and get the Sunni Arabs back into the game, form a new government without Maliki. But I don't want Iran to dominate Iraq. And that's where they're headed. If the central government falls, the Iranians are going on the Shia area of Iraq, the south. Don't let the Iranians save Baghdad. Let us save Baghdad, so there will be a chance at a second government.
GRAHAM: Because Iraq and Syria combined are going to be the staging area for the next 9/11 if we don't do something about it. The people holding ground in Iraq also hold ground in Syria. [We must attack ISIS to] stop the march on Baghdad. Form a new government. Send Petraeus and Crocker over, somebody who knows [what to do].
MITT ROMNEY: Well, what we're fighting for is to preserve freedom in the region and to prevent the region from becoming a hotbed from which there could be attacks launched against us. But what has happened in Iraq and with ISIS is a good deal predictable by virtue of the president's failure to act appropriately and at the extraordinary time that was presented a couple of years ago in Syria. And also his failure to achieve a Status of Forces Agreement so that we could have an ongoing presence in Iraq. Bad things happen as a result of inaction. Consequences have obviously been very severe.
Q: So what would you do specifically?
ROMNEY: There's a propitious time to do things to prevent bad things from happening. to tell you precisely what's going to happen right now and what things we ought to do militarily o stop this ISIS movement from creating a terrorist state--that would require me to get the kind of intelligence briefings I no longer get.
ROMNEY: In 2012 I made it very clear that I thought we should've signed a Status of Forces Agreement, consistent with what President Bush said a long time ago, that we should have an ongoing presence. Not a massive military presence, but 10,000 or 20,000 troops to provide the training and the intelligence resources that Iraq would need to keep things like [ISIS] from happening. We have the strength to be able to get Maliki to sign a Status of Forces Agreement.
REP. PETER KING: That is a very real concern. There's no doubt that ISIS looks upon itself as an Iraq/Syria power and it definitely has talked with the United States going back to 2011 when it was just Al Qaeda and Iraq before the Syrian component had even kicked in. We captured a number of their officers in the United States, attempting to carry out an attack on Fort Knox. So clearly, if they can get good sanctuary in their Northeastern Syria, in Iraq, this makes it, in effect, a privileged sanctuary to attack the United States apart from the destabilization they can do throughout the Middle East, especially the countries such as Jordan and to Israel. And that also of course increases the power of Iran as far as being an influence in that region.
CRUZ: There's a whole range of activity. President Obama set two straw men: One, invade or two, do nothing. And there's a whole range of intermediate steps. Pres. Obama should have spoken out clearly in support of freedom, in support of the protesters when the protesters began in the Maidan Square. I had the privilege of traveling through the Maidan Square, being led by 16-year-old high school girl who saw her compatriots shot by army snipers And they continue to protest for freedom. America should speak out for freedom. But then after that, we should stand with our allies and not give into Russia. We should, right now, install the anti-ballistic missile batteries in Eastern Europe, in Poland, the Czech Republic, that were scheduled to go in 2009, that Pres. Obama canceled in an effort to appease Putin. That hadn't worked. And we should be using energy as a tool to help liberate the Ukrainian people and to impose costs on Putin.
It is a dumb idea to announce to Iran that you would accept and contain that country if it were to become a nuclear power. But it is equally dumb, dangerous and foolhardy to announce in advance how we would react to any nation that obtains nuclear weapons. If, after World War II, we had preemptively announced that containment of nuclear powers would never be considered, the US would have trapped itself into nuclear confrontations with Russia & China.
I believe all options should be on the table to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, including the military option. I have voted repeatedly for sanctions against Iran and will continue to do so. But I will also continue to argue that war is a last resort.
PAUL: I've repeatedly voted for sanctions against Iran. And I think all options should be on the table to prevent them from having nuclear weapons. I'm a stickler on what the wording is, because I don't want to have voted for something that declared war without people thinking through this. They said containment will never, ever be our policy. We woke up one day and Pakistan had nuclear weapons. If that would have been our policy towards Pakistan, we would be at war with Pakistan. The people who say, "by golly, we will never stand for that", they are voting for war.
Q: Could the US live with a nuclear armed Iran?
PAUL: It's not a good idea to announce that in advance. Should I announce to Iran, "well, we don't want you to, but we'll live with it." No, that's a dumb idea to say that you're going to live with it. However, the opposite is a dumb idea too.
EMANUEL: I am uncharacteristically optimistic, just on the optimism side of 50%.
Q: Why now?
EMANUEL: I think it is a framework deal, which is different and easier than a final deal. And I think the parties have enough in common about the framework, which they have known for ten years.
Q: But why is there the will now?
EMANUEL: Hamas is as weak as it's going to be. Abbas is ready to work with Israel. Israel has a security concern involving geography. But geography does not have the same value it did in 1967. And I want to say that there is nothing I just said that major figures in the national security apparatus of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and Israel haven't said publicly. Nothing! It is not my business. I don't really care. But Israel's national security apparatus has concluded what I have observed.
Paul's dovish line started to seem a bit embarrassing when men with unmarked uniforms began to seize control of parts of Crimea. Paul then issued this timid warning for the Kremlin: "Russia should be reminded that stability and territorial integrity go hand in hand with prosperity. Economic incentives align against Russian military involvement in Ukraine."
Eight days later, he published an essay in Time under the headline, US Must Take Strong Action Against Russian Aggression. He wrote, "It is our role as a global leader to be the strongest nation in opposing Russia's latest aggression."
RUBIO: I have two thoughts. The first is my preference would be that people would refrain from writing these sorts of things until the president is out of office, because I it undermines the ability to conduct foreign policy. That being said, I don't think we can ignore what is in that book. The motivations in Afghanistan was primarily political: the president had that this is not his war. And you saw that reflected in the decision that he made at the same time that he announced the surge, he also announced an exit date and strategy, thereby emboldening Taliban to believe they can wait us out. And the result is now evident across the globe. Our allies see us as unreliable and our enemies feel emboldened. And I think that this is--confirms our worst fears that this is an administration that lacks a strategic foreign policy and in fact largely driven by politics and tactics.
RUBIO: Much of what has happened in Iraq lately has been the result of poor leadership within Iraq. Contributing to that is the fact that the US does not have long-term status in Iraq. As a result, air space [can be] used by Iranians and others to do all sorts of things. Ultimately whether it's Afghanistan or Iraq, future of those countries is in the hands of their own people. And the US can't rescue them from themselves. But I do think we have a strategic interest in what happens there. And it poses a real challenge, because if you start adding it up now, Bob, you have an ungoverned space in Iraq, ungoverned spaces in Syria, potentially ungoverned spaces if Afghanistan begins to fall back, ungoverned spaces in Africa. This is all fertile territory for al Qaeda and other radical elements to set up training camps and plot attacks against the homeland and our interests.
RUBIO: I'd be open-minded to providing assistance to the Iraqi government in terms of training and equipment to allow them to deal with the challenges. I would not underestimate the impact that these rebels al Qaeda-linked forces in in Syria are now having cross border in Iraq. I think's going to be a growing factor. Some have asked me this week if I would support another invasion of Iraq, of course not. I don't think that's a solution at this point. But I think we're going to be dealing with this for some time. But ultimately, the only way to solve this problem is for the Iraqi government to be able to solve it. They need the military and security resources in the short-term. But in the long-term, they need a stable political process, otherwise this is going to be an ongoing problem forever.
SANTORUM: Well, look, the larger point to this book, in my opinion, was the fact that the president puts domestic politics before international concerns. Everything is seen through the lens of domestic politics.
Q: Gates does give Obama credit for bucking not just the politics, but the political advice that he was given.
SANTORUM: Well, I would just say that the president, when he ran first time, said that, "The war we need to win is Afghanistan," right?
Q: Right, that was thought of as "the good war."
SANTORUM: Right. And the problems I have with this administration are less Afghanistan than they are what we did in Iraq when we pulled out of Iraq. Because it was politically popular to pull out of Iraq.
SCHWEITZER: Well, the Europeans are right. We have had 12 years of war. For the last 11 years, you can't find anybody left in America who can tell you, why are we still in Afghanistan? Al Qaeda attacked us. They're not in Afghanistan. We're fighting somebody called the Taliban. They live in caves in the Stone Age. Why are we still there?
Q: Because we promised we would stay there.
SCHWEITZER: Who did we promise? We promised Karzai, who is a crook, and his brother is the biggest drug smuggler on the planet.
Q: If we leave them to go back to the same cycle that led to 9/11--
SCHWEITZER: Perpetual war in the Middle East!
SCHWEITZER: I lived in Saudi Arabia during the '80s when we were supporting Saddam Hussein, who was fighting Iran, the people that we know are the most dangerous actors in the neighborhood. When we went into Iraq, al Qaeda didn't function there. We destabilized Iraq. We threw Saddam Hussein out, who was a bad guy, like a lot of other people in the Middle East, and now we have al Qaeda. It's our problem. We broke the china. Most people in Washington DC did not live in the Middle East. I lived in Libya & Saudi Arabia. I watched Iraq fight that war with Iran. I knew that we were supporting Iraq during that war. And now we've created a vacuum in Iraq. Those people who supported that Iraqi war didn't understand the politics of the Mideast. Al Qaeda wasn't there. Iraq hadn't attacked us. We made a very big mistake there. It cost us a lot of blood and a lot of treasure. And we ought not make those mistakes in the future.
CHRISTIE: You know, I'm the governor of New Jersey. There a lot of people who are significantly better briefed on this than I am. And I think when guys like me start to shoot off on opinions about this kind of stuff, it's really ill-advised. So I'll leave it to Secretary Kerry and the folks that are in charge of this to make decisions about where we go. And then once they put something together, if they do, then I'll make a judgment on that. But it's just I'm not the right person to be asking that question to, with all due respect.
Q: But you're a national political figure. You're a leader in the Republican Party. You may someday run for president. Do you have a view about whether Iran should continue to enrich uranium?
CHRISTIE: Like I said, I think the folks who are involved in this on a day to day basis should be making those kind of opinions known publicly. I'm just not going to engage in that.
KING: If we go too much in the open then we let the enemy know what's going on and we create problems. And as far as the use of drones, the fact is, every war there is collateral damage. Unfortunately innocent people are killed. But the efforts that the US takes to protect innocent lives is unprecedented. If you want to go back to Dresden and Hamburg and what happened in WWII, where thousands of civilians were killed, the fact is this has kept Americans alive, it's also helped people in the Middle East. So I think we should stop being apologetic about drones, tell Rand Paul to stop doing overnight filibusters on people being killed with drones. We should be standing by our military. We have stop being so defensive.
PAUL: No. And I think it's a mistake to get involved in the Syrian civil war. I would ask, "Do you think that it's less likely or more likely that chemical weapons will be used again if we bomb Assad?" Is it more likely or less likely that we'll have more refugees in Jordan or that Israel might suffer attack? I think all of the bad things that you could imagine are all more likely if we get involved in the Syrian civil war.
Q: Secretary Kerry says for you and others not to authorize force is really hurtful to US credibility.
PAUL: The one thing I'm proud of the president for is that he's coming to Congress in a constitutional manner & asking for our authorization. That's what he ran on: his policy was that no president should unilaterally go to war without congressional authority. And I'm proud that he's sticking by it.
PAUL: The line in the sand should be that America gets involved when American interests are threatened. I don't see American interests involved on either side of this Syrian war. I see Assad, who has protected Christians for a number of decades, and then I see the Islamic rebels on the other side who have been attacking Christians. I see Al Qaeda on the side we would go into support. And I don't see a clear-cut American interest. I don't see [the rebels, if] victorious, being an American ally.
Q: How would the US look if the president decided to take military action and Congress does not give that authority?
PAUL: I think it would show that he made a grave mistake when he drew a red line. When you set a red line that was not a good idea to beginning with, and now you're going to adhere to it to show your machismo, then you're really adding bad policy to bad policy
RUBIO: In foreign policy, timing matters. These were options for us a year and a half ago, before this became this chaotic. It behooved us to identify whether there were any elements there within Syria fighting against Assad that we could work with, reasonable people that wouldn't carry out human rights violations, and could be part of building a new Syria. We failed to do that. So now our options are quite limited. Now the strongest groups fighting against Assad, unfortunately, are al Qaeda-linked elements.
Q: So here, now, what would President Rubio do? Would you commit US forces to a no-fly zone?
RUBIO: If I was in charge of this issue, we never would have gotten to this point. That being said, I think we need to continue to search for elements on the ground that we can work with, so that if & when Assad falls, they will manage a future, hopefully democratic Syria, and peaceful Syria.
RUBIO: First of all, a moderate by Iranian political standards is not what we could describe as moderate here in the West, but let me just say that I hope so, because the people of Iran do not want the future that their leaders have wanted. The people of Iran want to engage with the rest of the world, and hopefully this will be a step in that direction. But I'm not all that optimistic. In order to have better relations, not just with the US but with the world, Iran needs to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions. And unfortunately, this gentleman who was just elected is a strong supporter of the nuclear program and the nuclear weaponization as well.
KING: I have real concerns. The reason I say that is that so much time has gone by, and unfortunately, to a large extent, al Qaeda elements have a lot of control within the rebel movements. My concern is that, by arming the rebels, we could be strengthening al Qaeda. So, whatever arming we do--and obviously, Assad is evil, and everyone is interested that he go--but if we are going to arm the rebels, we have to make sure that those arms are not going to end up in the possession of al Qaeda supporters nor at the end game is al Qaeda going to be in a position to take over this movement.
Q: That's a pretty high bar, right? I mean, we put weapons into countries a lot and don't know where they're going to end up.
KING: Until we have a better understanding of where the weapons will be going, I'm very concerned that we're just replacing one terrible dictator with a terrible ideological movement, which is aimed at our destruction.
GIULIANI: I think that, since the capture of bin Laden, there's been a kind of sense that "al-Qaeda's on the run; the threat is less." The threat isn't less. The threat is actually more diverse now, and maybe even more complex. And you can detect, through the Benghazi defense, and even during some of this Boston marathon bombing: There's a tendency to underplay what is, in fact, a growing danger, and to some extent, a different kind of threat than what we were facing, 3 or 4 years ago. [Maybe] this is a product of "leading from behind," like happened in Syria, where a lot of action could have been taken a year ago that may have precluded this. But the president prefers to watch these things play out before he makes a decision. They'd be well advised to get a lot more proactive now, because things are really heating up.
RUBIO: I believe the administration has acted responsibly. I think they've done three things that are important:
HUNTSMAN: We've heard this music before. For anyone who's watched the region, the North Koreans have a way of manipulating not just the regional headlines, but indeed, global headlines and then asking for concessions. And sadly, people step up and give concessions and that just continues the cycle.
Q: The truth is we don't know very much about this new leader, do we?
HUNTSMAN: Nobody knows much about this new leader.
Q: So, we don't know what he's capable of.
HUNTSMAN: You don't know what he's capable of. You know what his father did historically, the same kind of provocative cycles. But I think what we do know for sure is that these external provocations that we have witnessed are pretty much indicative of internal political challenges, which is to say that young 29-year-old Kim Jong- Un is further trying to consolidate his power among the central military commission, among the political elite.
BUSH: Yes. You know, a lot of things in history change over time. I think people will respect the resolve that my brother showed, both in defending the country and the war in Iraq. But history will judge that in a more objective way than today. The war has wound down now and it's still way too early to judge what success it had in providing some degree of stability in the region.
Rubio has not been shy in pushing for that sort of muscular foreign policy approach. In hearings, he has been an outspoken voice for intervention in Libya ever since the anti-government protesters first began clashing with dictator Muammar el-Qaddafi's forces over the winter. He supported a push for a resolution to authorize the use of American military force.
On the unrest in Syria, where the Obama administration has moved cautiously in pressuring strongman Bashar al-Assad, Rubio teamed with Lieberman to introduce a resolution calling for tougher sanctions on the Assad regime.
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Democrats running for President:
Sen.Michael Bennet (D-CO) V.P.Joe Biden (D-DE) Mayor Mike Bloomberg (I-NYC) Gov.Steve Bullock (D-MT) Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-IN) Sen.Cory Booker (D-NJ) Secy.Julian Castro (D-TX) Gov.Lincoln Chafee (L-RI) Rep.John Delaney (D-MD) Rep.Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) Sen.Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) Gov.Deval Patrick (D-MA) Sen.Bernie Sanders (I-VT) CEO Tom Steyer (D-CA) Sen.Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) Marianne Williamson (D-CA) CEO Andrew Yang (D-NY) 2020 Third Party Candidates: Rep.Justin Amash (L-MI) CEO Don Blankenship (C-WV) Gov.Lincoln Chafee (L-RI) Howie Hawkins (G-NY) Gov.Jesse Ventura (I-MN) |
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V.P.Mike Pence(R-IN) Pres.Donald Trump(R-NY) Rep.Joe Walsh (R-IL) Gov.Bill Weld(R-MA & L-NY) 2020 Withdrawn Democratic Candidates: Sen.Stacey Abrams (D-GA) Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-NYC) Sen.Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) Sen.Mike Gravel (D-AK) Sen.Kamala Harris (D-CA) Gov.John Hickenlooper (D-CO) Gov.Jay Inslee (D-WA) Mayor Wayne Messam (D-FL) Rep.Seth Moulton (D-MA) Rep.Beto O`Rourke (D-TX) Rep.Tim Ryan (D-CA) Adm.Joe Sestak (D-PA) Rep.Eric Swalwell (D-CA) | ||
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