‘We have been lied to about a lot of things…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) As many as 10 Republican senators are considering voting for the House’s war powers resolution, which would significantly limit President Donald Trump’s ability to take military action in Iran.
After a debriefing with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week, Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rand Paul, R-Ky., said the officials had failed to provide adequate justification for the drone strike that killed Iranian general and terrorist Qassem Soleimani.
Lee slammed the Trump administration for trying to quash debate on the subject.
“I’m worried,” Lee told CNN’s Jake Tapper during an interview last week. “And as a United States senator and as a voter and citizen, I have learned not to simply take the federal government’s word at face value.”
The opposition reflected a rare show of solidarity between the libertarian opponents of government overreach and Democrats who are simply determined to oppose any action taken by the Trump administration.
Many on the Left pushed back indignantly after facing criticism that their rhetoric appeared to put them on the side of terrorists who sympathized with the murderous Islamic regime.
However, Lee cautioned that the cost of a potential war in the region wasn’t worth the gamble.
“I mean, look, we were lied to about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” he said. “We were lied to for a couple of decades about what was happening in Afghanistan. We have been lied to about a lot of things.”
Trump, too, has been critical of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan initiated by his Oval Office predecessors.
He had previously sought to withdraw the American military presence in the Middle East, but he argued that Soleimani’s plans to attack U.S. interests—including the embassy in Baghdad—represented an imminent threat.
In addition to Lee and Paul, eight more Senate Republicans are reviewing the legislation, according to Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who introduced the resolution in the Senate.
Among them are three of Trump’s most vocal GOP critics—Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah.
“There’s a good discussion going on,” Kaine told The Hill.
Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., has announced he would vote for a revised version of Kaine’s proposed bill, and Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, is also said to be considering it.
It “would not be unreasonable to say that there might be a group of 10 who should be considered potential [GOP] candidates to vote for it,” Lee said.
Frequent Trump defender Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., however, called the war powers resolution as a “blatantly unconstitutional” act.
“Congress has the power to declare war,” Graham told Fox News. “That doesn’t mean the commander in chief can’t use military force to protect the country without Congress.”
Graham pointed out that it was a bit disingenuous of some of Trump’s critics to raise their objections now after offering their blessings to military executive actions by the Bush and Obama administrations.
“We’ve had military engagements hundreds of times,” he said. “What the president did is he took out Soleimani, who was planning another attack against American forces in Iraq who were lawfully present. He has all the authority he needs to protect troops in the field.”