House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi applauded Republicans for a bill that would approve President Obama’s request to support Syrian rebels fighting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
“What we’ve seen so far of the bill is, it responds to the president’s request in a substantive way — not completely, but in a good way,” the California Democrat said Monday afternoon on MSNBC’s “Ronan Farrow Daily” program.
Pelosi said she expects the measure to pass the House this week “overwhelmingly.”
“This is a very discrete piece [of legislation]. It’s about giving the authority to the president for him, for us, to engage in training the responsible Syrian rebels … outside Syria,” she said.
She downplayed concerns regarding the potential effectiveness of the Free Syrian Army, which even the president questioned earlier this year, saying they would be properly vetted to ensure the rebels “are there for the purpose that we are training them to do the job.”
The lawmaker added that the brutal emergence in recent months of the Islamic State, which has beheaded two American journalists and a British aid worker, has “changed the dynamic” of the situation.
Asked whether Congress would push for a vote by year’s end to give the president broader authorization to fight the terrorists, Pelosi said “it depends on the actions the president takes” in the meantime.
“I believe … that the authorization that the president has now is sufficient for what he is doing now,” she said.
The Democrat added there is little support in Congress or the nation to commit U.S. combat troops to the fight.
Pelosi sidestepped the question of if the United States was “at war” with the terrorists, but said, “we have initiated hostilities against ISIS, that’s for sure.”
“It’s not a term of war that would require our declaration of war by the Congress of the United States. But this is deadly serious,” she said.
