Listen to the entire program<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"\/home\/graphics\/senate_syria.jpg\")
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday kicked off a Congressional debate over whether or not to grant President Obama the authority to use force in Syria. Senator Robert Menendez, chair of the committee, opened the hearing by stating his support for Obama\u2019s action. He and his fellow Senators, questioned Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey. <\/p>\n
In echoes of the weeks before the 2003 Iraq war Secretary Kerry and some Senators referred often to \u201cweapons of mass destruction\u201d as well as to the graphic images of dead Syrian children that have now been seen around the world. <\/p>\n
Most of the Senate Committee members, including California\u2019s Barbara Boxer, were overwhelmingly supportive of the resolution, with some Senators even saying it didn\u2019t go far enough to curb Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. <\/p>\n
The most vocal opponent of military strikes on Syria was Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky who argued that the President was playing \u201cconstitutional theater\u201d by asserting he would strike Syria even if Congress voted against granting him authority. <\/p>\n
Some Senators worried that the draft resolution presented to them by the President contained a loophole that could be used to authorize ground troops even though Kerry assured the committee that Obama was highly unlikely to put \u201cboots on the ground.\u201d <\/p>\n
The hearing was interrupted at least twice by activists holding up antiwar signs.<\/p>\n
GUEST: Ann Wright, former State Department diplomat and retired Army colonel, active in the antiwar movement<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday kicked off a Congressional debate over whether or not to grant President Obama the authority to use force in Syria. Senator Robert Menendez, chair of the committee, opened the hearing by stating his support for Obama\u2019s action. He and his fellow Senators, questioned Secretary of State John Kerry, Defense […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-program"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37604"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37615,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37604\/revisions\/37615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}