Sen. Ted Cruz

I could have envisioned conceivably a military operation that I would think makes sense and would support.

So I wanted to listen to him.

And I will tell you, I asked in both classified settings and in public settings.

At the time, there were seven major rebel groups in Syria.

many of which were affiliated with radical Islamic terrorists, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra.

And I said, OK, let's say you go in and topple Assad.

How do you stop the radical Islamic terrorists from taking over?

And if al-Qaeda has chemical weapons, we've made the world much worse.

As bad as Bashar Assad is, he's not using those weapons on Americans.

Al-Qaeda would love to use those weapons on Americans.

I'm not interested in having terrorists who hate us get weapons they can use to kill us.

When you asked them those questions, the answers of the Obama administration were incoherent.

They were all over the place.

They said at one point, John Kerry said, we're going to launch an unbelievably small attack.

It was like, OK, well, what the hell is the purpose?

And look, I could have envisioned, let's say there was a mission to go in.

We knew where the chemical weapons were.

They were in one warehouse.

We're going to send in a squad to get the chemical weapons and remove them.

And I could envision that being targeted there.