Jim Himes

Good to be with you, Rachel.

Well, we finally got a consistent rationale from the Secretary of State, from Marco Rubio.

I first heard it in a Gang of Eight meeting on the Tuesday prior to the attack.

We heard it as the attack was underway, and we've heard it a variety of times since.

And the problem is it's a profoundly dissatisfying rationale.

So what did Marco Rubio tell us?

He said that we were sure that the Israelis were about to launch an attack.

We were sure that when the Israelis launched that attack, that the Iranians would retaliate against us.

And therefore, we had to join the Israelis.

And Rachel, it's on the face of it.

So it's as though we're Lichtenstein, as though we have no leverage over the players in the region.

And of course, we do have rather substantial leverage or at least partnership with Israel.

And there were all sorts of options.

But that was the rationale.

And then, of course, we got the president freelancing his own rationales, which it was about the attempts to kill him or the nuclear facilities, which we were told were obliterated.

But nonetheless, if you go with the Secretary of State's explanation, which he's repeated multiple times, we were passive and reactive bystanders in the single most serious thing that we can do, i.e.

get involved in war and a war in the Middle East.

And I don't need to punctuate that point because we all just watched

the dignified transfer of the remains of a young soldier, Sergeant Pennington, who was with us a week ago and who is no longer with us.

And that just punctuates why this is probably the most serious decision a president can make, taken completely unseriously.