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Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for his passion and caring for the people of Aleppo and Syria. History will judge Senator McCain well. I am proud to be by his side.

But let's be honest with each other. It is not just the Obama administration that is the problem here. Where is the United Nations? A convoy carrying aid to Aleppo was bombed, and we all believe it was by the Russians. What has the U.N. done? What about the countries in the region that border Syria? What do they know? Our friends in France have been attacked several times based on ISIL's ability to project wars by having the caliphate in Syria. They have dropped bombs. All of us have used air power. Where is Trump? If you can understand what he would do differently, I would love to hear it. I don't understand it. I can tell you this, Secretary Clinton really disappointed me when she said ``no ground forces in Iraq and Syria.''

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Mr. GRAHAM. Yes, I agree. We have over 5,000 troops on the ground in Iraq, and if we count the people who come and go, it is closer to 7,000. So from their point of view, I think that is a pretty offensive statement. We have lost one SEAL, and other people are definitely at risk.

We live in an interesting time. It is probably much like the 1930s, when Hitler was building up. I am not saying al-Assad is Hitler, and I am not saying Putin is Hitler. But I am saying there is evil on the march, and most people are not doing anything about it. If you are in Aleppo right now, you feel as the Jewish people must have felt in the 1930s--and other countries who were being overrun by evil--when a lot of people just stood along the sidelines and issued statements.

To Samantha Powers, whom I have known and actually personally like her: Do you think anybody listens to you, Samantha? Do you think anybody cares what you say? Because it is just all words. You have been up there for months now, and every ceasefire agreement has been broken.

To my good friend John Kerry: You said it would be diplomatic malpractice not to try to get a ceasefire solution. At what point does it become malpractice to misread the person you are talking to? At what point will you understand that the Russians are not interested in a ceasefire agreement? They want to install al-Assad in a military fashion so that he cannot be overtaken by power, which means they win.

So to me, the real crime here is that the world, not just Obama, has let this happen, and to the people in this body.

Several years ago, we were in an authorization-to-use-military-force debate after al-Assad used chemical weapons in violation of the redline that President Obama drew. To Senator McCain's credit--and I went with him during Labor Day several years ago. The President called us up and said: I want to take action because it is clear to us that al-Assad used chemical weapons. We went outside the Oval Office in the driveway and stood by our President, called the Speaker of the House, Mr. Boehner, who stood with the President. There was a lot of Republican support for the idea that the President must act to put this brutal man back in check. That was early in the week. By Friday, President Obama takes a stroll in the Rose Garden with Denis McDonough, and, all of a sudden, now we are coming to Congress.

I have yet to get a call. I read it in the paper. When it came to Congress, it completely melted down. People on our side objected to the use of force, saying we would be the Air Force for Al Qaeda. People on our side did not understand what it meant to draw a red line and not use some force.

There is plenty of blame to go around. People on the Democratic side almost never come to the floor and challenge what is going on in Syria.

President Obama is getting a complete pass, except from pockets, like Senator McCain and every now and then an editorial. Why? Most people don't care about Syria because it seems distant.

When you talk about the young boy, it breaks our heart, and then we move on. Most people think we can't get involved ever again in the Middle East because it is just hopeless over there. Here is what I would suggest to you that we learn: If you let Syria continue to deteriorate, you will regret it. The King of Jordan, one of our best allies, is being overrun with Syrian refugees. One in five children in Lebanon is a Syrian refugee. This war will never end until America leads.

Back to Obama--you and your administration are very deceitful when it comes to foreign policy. You are the ones who told us, as to Benghazi, that this was a protest caused by a hateful video rather than an organized terrorist attack, for weeks. In the debate last night, Secretary Clinton said that the reason we had no troops in Iraq was because the Iraqis did not want them and would not agree to leave some troops behind.

All I can say is that is a lie. I know that to be a lie because I was called by her before the decision to leave was made, and she asked that I, Senator McCain, and Senator Lieberman go to Iraq to talk to the parties about a follow-on force. We did. We went to Prime Minister Maliki, President Barzani of the Kurds, and Mr. Allawi, who was representing the Shia group--the Iraqiya Party, I believe it is called.

The bottom line is that we left there with an understanding that all three groups would work with each other to have a follow-on force because they understood the need for it. This is the moment I will never forget as long as I live. During the meeting with Prime Minister Maliki, when it was my turn to ask him questions, he turned to me before I could speak and said: How many troops are you talking about leaving?

I turned to General Austin, who was the commander, and Ambassador Jeffrey, who was the Ambassador at the time, and I said: General, what is the answer to the Prime Minister's question?
He said: We are still working on that.

Here is the truth. There never was a protest outside the consulate in Benghazi. It was always a terrorist attack. They should never have had the Ambassador there to begin with, and they left him hanging.

Here is the truth. The Obama administration wanted to leave. They wanted to get to zero to fulfill a campaign promise. The reason the general could not answer Prime Minister Maliki's question is because the White House was trying to get the numbers down to the point where it wouldn't matter if he left anybody because they were so low.

You can say a lot about Trump. You can say a lot about Republicans, and a lot of it is true. You can say a lot about President Obama and Hillary Clinton when it comes to Iraq. But the one thing you can't say is that it was the Iraqis' fault that we left.

The reason I will not tolerate that is because too many people fought and died to get Iraq back in a better place. The surge did work, and they held it as a success.

Back to Syria, if you don't realize that we have several hundred people on the ground today in Syria, you are dishonoring them. If you don't realize that the strategy Obama has come up with will never work, you are not doing your homework. The people we are training to take ISIL down and to hold Raqqa after they take ISIL down are YPG Kurds.

That may not mean anything to you, but it means a lot to the region.

The Kurdish element that is being trained cannot hold Raqqa, cannot liberate Raqqa. General Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said that. The people we are relying on to destroy ISIL can't take them down and hold the territory because it is an Arab town. As to the people we are training to fight ISIL, the vast majority of the force has no interest in going after Assad.

If you leave Assad in power, the war never ends. Some 450,000 people have been slaughtered by Assad's forces--mostly through barrel bombing and brutal tactics. There is no plan to create a military counter push coming from the Syrians themselves to create negotiating space. Without power, there is no diplomacy. The force to destroy ISIL will never be successful in holding the territory. The force we are training to destroy ISIL has no interest in going after Assad. If you leave Assad in power, this never ends.

This whole foreign policy approach of the Obama administration is ill-conceived, shortsighted, and deceitful, and they know everything I am saying is true. There are people in the White House who know that the reason we left Iraq was because of politics in the White House. There are people in the White House who know--and the Pentagon who know--that the Kurdish force being trained can't get the job done. They are just trying to buy time until the next President comes along.

All I can say about Syria is that it seems to be a faraway place with strange sounding names. It seems to be something we shouldn't get involved in, in the minds of a lot of people. The one thing I would challenge you to think about is that the last time powers gathered up to murder and butcher hundreds of thousands of people, it eventually mattered to us. It is going to matter to you sooner than you think because all of these children who lost their parents and all of these parents who lost their children are looking at us, and they are going to hate our guts, along with the world community at large, because we sat on the sidelines and watched it happen.

Come with me and Senator McCain to a refugee camp and look into these kids' eyes. I see broken-hearted children who need somebody to help them and a good investment. The terrorists see a recruiting opportunity, a literal gift from the world at large. You may not think it will affect you, but I promise you that the policies of the Barack Obama administration--when it comes to Syria--are going to haunt the world for generations if we don't do something about it soon and change course.

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