CNN "CNN Newsroom" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Brendan Boyle

Interview

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BERMAN: All right. You are looking at live pictures from an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council. Speaking right now is the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya. He is expected to deliver a scathing rebuke of the U.S.-led military effort in Syria overnight, the missile strike against chemical weapons facilities. He's even expected to call for a resolution condemning those strikes. That resolution will fail.

When he is done we do expect to hear from the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley. She will speak. She has had very strong words against both the Russians and the Syrians the last several days. So standby for that.

In the meantime I want to bring in Democratic Congressman Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania. Congressman -- thank you so much for being with us.

Let me start with the very basic question. Do you believe that Assad's use of chemical weapons one week ago needed -- demanded a military response?

REP. BRENDAN BOYLE (D-PA), HOUSE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE: Yes, I do. And I happen to have called for that immediately in the aftermath. Also one week before that latest chemical attack, I led a letter along with a Republican colleague that saying this administration needed to do far more to formulate a policy and also consider as a possibility any sort of strikes that would take away the ability of this regime to deliver those sorts of chemical attacks.

Because keep in mind even though this is -- this latest attack by Assad is the one that got a lot of media attention this is just the eighth chemical attack this year --

BERMAN: Right.

BOYLE: -- undertaken by the Assad regime.

BERMAN: Military officials -- Pentagon officials say that this blow, this overnight attack crippled the ability of Syria to produce these chemical weapons. How will you assess -- how do you assess what you have heard?

BOYLE: I hope that that's correct and that the initial reports are correct. But at this point, we have no -- as a member of Congress, as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, until we have a hearing or a classified briefing, we really have no basis to draw that conclusion.

I would be a little bit surprised if limited strikes such as these completely eliminated the ability of the Assad regime to deliver these sort of chemical attacks. So I hope that that's correct but I will reserve judgment until we get the classified briefing.

BERMAN: You used the word "limited attack". I've also heard "narrow" to describe what the United States, the United Kingdom and France did overnight. Do you believe these attacks should have gone further?

BOYLE: Well, again until we get the full information on what was taken out and how successful they were, I would hold back judgment.

But let me say this. We are going to focus on these strikes that happened last night, and as I said, I have been someone who along with a number of colleagues from the other side of the aisle have really pushed this administration to consider not just suddenly saying you are pulling out and withdrawing but to actually standing up to the Assad regime.

[11:20:04] Now, while I am pleased that we have finally had some action from the west and for very little cost had an ability to stand up and send a message to Assad that the civilized world would not stand for the gassing of children -- that said as I sit here on this Saturday morning, I can not tell you what this administration's policy is towards Syria.

One week ago he was talking about entirely pulling out. That ended up giving -- appeared to give a green light to Assad and you saw how Assad took that green light and ran with it in terms of gassing innocents including women and children.

Now, suddenly we have these strikes on a Friday night. So as I sit here, I am completely bewildered as to what exactly this administration's policy is now or going forward.

BERMAN: One difference between this and the Obama administration is the Obama administration decided not to respond to the chemical weapons attack and the Trump administration seems to be saying that sometimes it will respond to a chemical weapons attacks. It did one year ago and it did to this attack last Saturday. What we don't know, Congressman, is what it will do going forward.

The Pentagon officials were specifically asked what if Assad uses chlorine gas will that prompt another response? Do you believe that chlorine as opposed to a nerve agent like sarin, do you believe that chlorine alone is enough to prompt a U.S. military response?

BOYLE: I am not going to get into hair splitting about what sort of awful weapon were used requires a response or not. I do want to say though on the first part, the premise of your question -- look, there is plenty of blame to go around in the last two administrations when it comes to Syria and I have already said that publicly.

But, just to correct the record as far as President Obama. After -- if you recall David Cameron leading Britain at that time was an ally of the United States. Suddenly Britain had to pull out because their parliament voted against any sort of military strikes.

At that point President Obama said that before he would move forward, he wanted Congress to vote on the issue. It was at that stage that the Republican-led Congress that had been demanding a vote suddenly refused to take one. That was why we did not proceed in Syria.

So I think really -- we do have bipartisan blame on our hands.

BERMAN: Look, I can sit here and I can tell you that Congress did not take a vote then, has not taken a vote now and the Constitution says the congress should vote on military action. That is fairly clear here.

In addition to what you are saying, which did happen there was no vote on military action. President Obama took that famous walk with his chief of staff Denis McDonough when he determined that he did not want to push for a military response to Syria and instead wanted to strike that deal where Russia would oversee the withdrawal of chemical weapons from Syria and there were a lot of chemical weapons that were taken out but clearly, clearly not all the chemical weapons right now. I understand -- and I understand you don't want to --

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BERMAN: -- hang on, hang on -- Congressman. I do understand you don't want to split hairs here about what horrific weapon Assad uses going forward should demand a chemical response. But that's the issue. When you are talking about a strategy, when you're asking for a clear strategy from the White House that's the unknown.

We don't know what the United States wants to do going forward about this, about Assad. Except for I think we perhaps know this morning they don't want to do anything to necessarily upset his hold on power.

BOYLE: Well, I was going to just comment when you talked about Russia because that's an important part of this dynamic. We did have, as you recited the history an agreement with the Russian regime which they guaranteed the removal of chemical weapons; clearly while some chemical weapons were removed, as we have seen the evidence, not all. Therefore, we must hold the Russian regime accountable.

That means real sanctions. That means Putin paying a price for these chemical attacks. Unfortunately, as part of this, even though Congress has by an almost unanimous basis passed wide-ranging sanctions on the Russian regime, this administration and this White House has refused to actually follow the law and follow through on making sure those sanctions stick.

That has to change. I hope that President Trump is finally waking up when it comes to Vladimir Putin. He's no friend of the United States or the west. We need this White House to finally put into place the sanctions that Congress passed overwhelmingly.

BERMAN: Congressman -- can I ask you, do you think Bashar al-Assad is scared this morning? Do you think that Russian leader Vladimir Putin is in any way chastened this morning?

[11:24:54] BOYLE: Obviously I don't know, and this is speculation, I don't think Assad is scared but I do think he is much more concerned now than he was 48 hours ago or certainly last week.

I happen to believe that moving forward, if we are ever going to get back to a real peace process to end this nightmare of a civil war that has lasted seven years, cost hundreds of thousands of lives and caused 12 million refugees. If we are ever going to get that place, it is going to be after the U.S. has led western coalition strikes such as we have seen.

BERMAN: I do appreciate you bringing up the victims here. The millions of Syrians who have been displaced or killed since this tragedy began some years ago.

Congressman Brendan Boyle -- thank you so much for being with us and discussing this, this morning. This is an issue that affects not just the Middle East but the entire world. Appreciate your time -- sir. And again, you're looking at live pictures on an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council right now. That is the Russian ambassador to the U.N. speaking. The Russians, they are proposing a measure to condemn the U.S.-led attacks over night.

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