CNN "Newsroom" - Transcript: Islamic State of Iraq and Syria
Interview
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Let's bring in Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. She joins us now from Miami.
Welcome, Congresswoman.
REP. ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN (R), FLORIDA: Thank you, Carol.
COSTELLO: You --
ROS-LEHTINEN: Thank you.
COSTELLO: Thank you for being here. I really appreciate it. You've said that the United States is getting back to a pre-9/11 mentality when it comes to the threat against ISIS. If that's the case, why isn't Congress calling in emergency session?
ROS-LEHTINEN: Well, we'll be glad to go back to Congress but the first thing that the president as commander in chief and as the head of our U.S. government needs to do is to lay out a vision, Carol, of what we're about to accomplish. If we go back to session tomorrow what is it that we're going to be debating? Is it going to be authorization for airstrikes? Is it going to be more military involvement in Iraq and Syria?
What is the president's grand scheme for what our U.S. objectives are. So I think that's the first part of what is missing in this. We could go into session this afternoon. What is it that we hope to accomplish? That's the mission of the president as commander in chief, what are his goals. Is it to defeat ISIL in Iraq, defeat ISIL in Syria?
I think he would find a lot of support in Congress for such an objective. He needs to lay out what our U.S. national interests are and I would be there to support him in that.
COSTELLO: All right, well, I do want to read you something that the Democratic congressman, John Larson from Connecticut, posted on his Web site yesterday. He said this, "As President Obama's administration weighs several options, Congress should be fully engaged. Rather than remaining at home second-guessing and criticizing the president's every move, Congress should be back in Washington and fully briefed. It remains unclear with regard to strikes in Syria whether the president needs congressional authority. It is congress's duty to weigh in and clarify as this serious situation continues to evolve."
So again, I ask you if --
ROS-LEHTINEN: Well --
COSTELLO: Go ahead.
ROS-LEHTINEN: Well, first I would say, yes, the president needs to lay out the strategy, the objective. This has been a bloody battle. ISIL is not going to be contained. They need to be defeated. Who is going to be in there with us? Now we've got the Kurds. Natural allies, who would be very helpful in stamping out this cancer, but what is our objective? Is it to just contain them? Is it to defeat them?
And I think once the president lays out his case, and he's weighing options, but first comes the strategy, what is the objective.
COSTELLO: Well, Congresswoman, in your mind --
ROS-LEHTINEN: And I think we can do this in a bipartisan way.
COSTELLO: In your mind, what specifically should the president suggest? What should we do to defeat ISIS?
ROS-LEHTINEN: Well, I think that the president needs to lay out our goals. Why is it in our U.S. national security interest to defeat this cancer? I believe it is. I believe that if we want to ignore the problem and get back to this 9/10 mentality and to think that the threat is no longer there, it will be a horrible future for the United States and all of our interests throughout that region.
COSTELLO: But I do think -- I do think --
ROS-LEHTINEN: We've got to defeat ISIL and I think that we've got allies helping us to do it.
COSTELLO: I understand. And I think everyone agrees with that but I think that people also want ideas from lawmakers about what specifically the United States should do.
So what specifically should it do right now besides fly spy missions other Syria?
ROS-LEHTINEN: Well, I think that we should have these spy missions over Syria. We've got the technology to know where we're supposed to strike. Now Iraq is a far clearer goal than Syria is. Why? Because actually doing these airstrikes may end up helping the person who just a few years ago and as of yesterday we said Assad must go, the supposed leader of Syria, who has used chemical weapons on his people, who has murdered thousands of individuals, who have forced his own countrymen to flee the country.
Now if we do airstrikes, and we can do them, and I hope that the president gets to that point, we've got to make sure that we don't miss an opportunity again, like he did in the past, where he didn't work with the Free Syrian Army, natural allies that we could have had, so many missed opportunities. Let's not miss them again.
COSTELLO: So who should the United States work with now?
ROS-LEHTINEN: We do have the Free Syrian Army that is still ready to work with us. Now, every foreign fighter, just like this McCain individual, is now flocking to Syria and Iraq to make the situation even worse. We've got to defeat ISIL not only on the battlefield, we've got to defeat the allure of fighting for this terrorist regime.
COSTELLO: But, Congresswoman, Congresswoman, I do understand that. I'm just trying to get from you how you think we should do that?
ROS-LEHTINEN: Airstrikes, working with our allies.
COSTELLO: Well, which allies?
ROS-LEHTINEN: For example in Iraq, with our allies that we've had -- look what Egypt and the UAE did just a few days ago without even consulting with the U.S., took strikes right to Libya to try to defeat the terrorists there. We've got the UK. We've got Canada. We've got France. We've got lots of folks who say they want to help us in defeating this cancer.
I say we do those airstrikes in Iraq, continue that, help arm the Kurds so that they can defeat ISIL, work with the Free Syrian Army, get air strikes going in Syria, but we need to make sure that we've got the intelligence to strike at the very heart of this cancer before it spreads everywhere.
COSTELLO: All right. All right. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, thank you so much for being with me this morning. I appreciate it.
ROS-LEHTINEN: Thank you, Carol.
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