President Obama wants Congress to attach his request for more authority to arm the Syrian rebels to a must-pass spending bill to give the government open past Sept. 30.
“It’s our preference that they add [the authority] to the continuing resolution,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters Thursday.
Time is of the essence, Earnest said, because Saudi Arabia has agreed to host a training operation for vetted members of the Syrian opposition, and U.S. officials want to take them up on the offer as quickly as possible.
“That’s why we’re asking Congress to act urgently,” he said. “The easiest way to get that done is to attach it to the continuing resolution,” which the House and Senate are set to act on early next week.
While Republican and Democratic Congressional leaders are divided on whether to grant Obama the new authority, rank-and-file members on both sides of the aisle appear split on the idea.
Members of Obama’s national security team have spent the last two days on Capitol Hill lobbying members on the issue and answering any questions they might have.
When it comes to expanding the U.S.-led airstrike campaign both in Iraq and likely in Syria, the White House said the president believes he has the power to launch them because of the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force, AUMF, that allowed the Bush administration to engage in an open-ended campaign against the terrorists who participated or helped facilitate the September 11, 2001, attacks
But he said that power doesn’t not extend specifically to the U.S. military arming and training a foreign army. Earnest said he couldn’t comment on reports that the CIA has operated a program providing some training and supplies to Syrian rebels for months, if not longer. He said this new arming and training effort would be “overt” and take place in Saudi Arabia by the U.S. military.
Last year during a speech at the National Defense University, Obama said it was time to update the 2001 AUMF because al Qaeda’s leaders had been decimated and the country needed to get off a perpetual war footing.
While Earnest said Obama continues to believe the 2001 AUMF provides the power to confront the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria wherever it is, he said he would also welcome an effort by Congress to rewrite a new law giving tailored to the new terrorist threat.
