August 22nd, 2013

McCain “confident” Syria used chemical weapons “again”

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) told “New Day” Anchor Kate Bolduan that chemical weapons were in fact used in Syria and the administration lost credibility in the region. McCain wondered when the United States would “stand up” for the people of Syria and also outlined military actions the United States could take to address the deadly crisis in the country.

“It’s obvious from the pictures when you see the dead bodies of children and women and others stacked up and the fact is it’s already been established that [President Bashar al-Assad] has used [chemical weapons] before, so as I said, it shouldn’t surprise us when he’s used it again,” McCain said. “It’s horrific and outrageous and the President [Obama] a year ago said there would be if they crossed a red line that there would be response. We know now of course that they’ve already used it. I’m sure and confident that they used it again and they will use it again unless they are reined in and prevented from doing so.”

On Egypt, McCain said, “There’s no credibility because we know that the administration at the President’s direction called the Egyptians and said if you overthrow Morsi, that we will have to, because of the law, consider that a coup. They overthrew Morsi, and they refused to call it a coup. We’re asking them to observe the rule of law and we are not observing our laws. Morsi was a terrible president. I have no grief for the Muslim Brotherhood for the way they governed, but the United States writes laws and we expect to abide by the laws and the generals are not impressed because we didn’t come through with our word. If we weren’t going to do that we shouldn’t have said it and now we have hundreds of people killed in the streets of Cairo.”

“New Day” airs weekday mornings from 6-9am ET on CNN.