Iraq Dragging Obama into Conflict
JOHN KING, CNN HOST: The President authorizes military force against Islamists in Iraq but promises it will not escalate beyond air strikes.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq.</s>KING: Trouble at home, too, a frustrated president promises executive action on immigration and other issues.</s>OBAMA: The American people don't want me standing around twiddling my thumbs.</s>KING: But with his poll numbers down again Democrats in tough races are running from the Obama label.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I am a Clinton Democrat.</s>KING: Plus Rand Paul barnstorms Iowa, making new friends and taking new positions on big issues.</s>SEN. RAND PAUL (R), KENTUCKY: I haven't proposed targeting or eliminating any aid to Israel.</s>KING: Really? Then explain this.</s>WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Just to be precise, end all foreign aid including the foreign aid to Israel as well, is that right?</s>PAUL: Yes.</s>KING: An evolution or is flip-flop a better label? INSIDE POLITICS, the biggest stories sourced by the best reporters now. Welcome to INSIDE POLITICS, I'm John King. Thanks for sharing your Sunday morning. And with us to share their reporting and their insights Maeve Reston of the "Los Angeles Times", Manu Raju of "Politico", CNN's Peter Hamby and Maggie Haberman of "Politico". U.S. war planes now in the skies over Iraq with a green light to target Islamist terrorists. Their orders issued by a president who counts ending the Iraq war among proudest achievement and who insists -- insists now he's not about to start another.</s>OBAMA: American combat troops will not be returning to fight in Iraq because there is no American military solution to the larger crisis in Iraq.</s>KING: Why? This is a question a lot of people are asking, why did the President clearly reluctant do this? The White House says it's for humanitarian reasons or to protect Americans. A lot of people, if you're going to go in, you've got to do something more decisive than this.</s>MAEVE RESTON, "LOS ANGELES TIMES": Absolutely. And I think there's going to be a huge debate over that as we see that roll out over the next couple of months. Because a lot of people are arguing that he should have gone in sooner, should have done more than he's dealing with everyone on the left who doesn't want further engagement in Iraq. And it was just so interesting in his statement this week that you just saw that hesitance and the fact that he did not want to be in this place.</s>KING: He spent as much time, did he not, explaining what the aviation assets for now but I'll say the troops, the military, would not do, as much as what it would do.</s>MAGGIE HABERMAN, POLITICO: Yes, the emphasis was there. No boots on the ground. We are not reengaging and/but we are going to order these strikes or we are going to allow for these strikes. This is a very difficult line to walk. He clearly does not want to be recommitted and yet here we are again and here we go again and it's very difficult to be halfway in. I mean there is this sense and this has been talked about a lot over the course of the end of last week that if we have to go back in because if we don't support the Kurds, if we lose the Kurds, then really Iraq is really lost. But right now this does feel to a lot of his critics and even to some supporters as a bit of a half measure.</s>PETER HAMBY, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER: This does seem in keeping with his foreign policy vision over the last couple years which is that whole small ball, hit singles rather than home runs, kind of low- risk humanitarian efforts. Michael Crowley in "Time Magazine" had a good piece on this, this week that are reminding him of how we went into Benghazi. It was a sort of a low-risk, humanitarian thing. We are Americans, we have to do this but then you have Republicans like John McCain and Marco Rubio saying we need bigger measures, we need to go in hard and attack assets in Syria and across the region.</s>KING: Let's get to the Republicans and the other critics in a minute. But let's focus on the President for a minute, Manu because Peter is right. The American people are with the President, or he's with them, when he says no combat troops. No big military interventions especially in the Middle East but pretty much anywhere in the world right. So he's with the American people or they're with him, except they don't support what he's doing otherwise. Look at this NBC/Wall Street Journal poll this past week. This is stunning. How is the President dealing with Russia and Ukraine, 23 percent -- that's his highest mark; with civil war in Syria, 18; Israel and Hamas conflict, 17 percent; the rise of ISIS in Iraq, 14 percent; the border crisis, 11 percent. A few months back we thought foreign policy was his strong suit.</s>MANU RAJU, POLITICO: Yes, he ran on that in 2012. I mean that was his calling card taking care of Osama bin Laden, ending these two wars. But we've seen, I mean the second term has been dictated by events outside of his control. In a lot of ways the White House seems powerless to deal with this and that's hurting his credibility at home, it's hurting his approval ratings and that's what is putting the senate at risk this fall. He's just not nearly as popular as he has been, almost unpopular in his presidency -- 40 percent in that latest poll.</s>KING: You mentioned, 86 days I believe from the midterm election. So we don't know how this one will play out -- whether it will go bad or whether it will go relatively well. But the question is how does it play out in a political year? And to that let's add some of the Republican critics, Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, he clearly wants to run for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. He told the conservative gathering on Friday he supports the President but he went further. He said, "We should use our assets in particular aviation assets to remove the threat of ISIS, not contain it, but to remove it. It is very appropriate for us to be the hunter and them to be the hunted." Marco Rubio, the freshman senator from Florida also looking at running for president in the Republican nomination says we need to go outside of Iraq. He said, "We need to also strike the supply routes from Syria, leadership and front line military units from the air. We should target the oil refinery in Syria they're using to fund their operations." Is there a mood in the country beyond the hawks in the Republican Party for bombing targets in Syria?</s>RESTON: I don't think so. We haven't seen any evidence of that yet but you know, this is certainly the line that they've been arguing for a long time and it allows them to make the argument that Obama has been weak on foreign policy and it sort of just gives them examples about all the chaos around the world and they can use that however they want.</s>RAJU: And the hawkish views of Republican Party still do dominate in a lot of ways particularly among the base and the party establishment and these guys who are running or are probably going to run can show some leadership on the issue, show sort of that tough, they can sort of define themselves differently than say Rand Paul for instance who polls show is a leading contender in 2016.</s>RESTON: It will be interesting to see what Clinton makes of all of this and how she talks about it over the next couple of weeks because she, of course, will also have to separate herself from the President on foreign policy.</s>HABERMAN: Which I don't think you're going to see her try to get ahead of the President on foreign policy either. She's been careful about that since she left Foggy Bottom. She has essentially waited until he comments and then she basically does a chaser shot.</s>HAMBY: Sorry -- I was going to say she kind of has to do that because unlike Rand Paul and Marco Rubio she's such a known commodity around the world. The world listens to what Hillary Clinton has to say which puts her a little bit in a box on that one.</s>HABERMAN: To that end though, we have seen her poll numbers come down a bit in recent weeks and I think some of it has been a lot of people believe that part of it is the pounding, just nonstop. When people hear about her record, it's Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi even if they don't think something actually happened, they don't really understand it. But you turn on the TV and you see essentially the world on fire. And you know that she was secretary of state, she's tied to his foreign policy.</s>KING: To the world on fire argument, the public polling, even the Republicans saying do stuff. They're all saying use air assets. None of them are saying put troops on the ground. They understand public opinion after Iraq and after Afghanistan. But sometimes presidents have to do things contrary to public opinion, if they see a threat around the world, something that has to be done. Sometimes they have act outside and one of the criticisms of this president is that this has built up to this crisis point because he didn't do anything for so long that he could have dealt with it when it was a forgive the metaphor, a smaller fire.</s>HABERMAN: Well, do you remember last year, Bill Clinton at a private event at the McCain Institute or Foundation or whatever the McCain thing is, he was speaking to what he thought was a sort of closed event but there was some audio of it and he talked about McCain's position on Syria, which was much more aggressive and he talked about his own presidency, how he had made mistakes on certain foreign policy issues of listening to the polls or you need to be careful about listening to the polls, that members of the house who will stand up and chest bump and so forth. But they, at the end of the day, they are not the President. And it was clearly a contrast to how he solved his --</s>RAJU: And even though hawks don't want to have a debate in Congress other this, if you brought this issue to Congress it would blow up and probably would not pass any sort of use of military force. We saw that happen in Syria last year as well.</s>KING: This is going to play out one way or the other as the President goes on vacation. He's already decided. He's supposed to go to Martha's Vineyard. He will go to Martha's Vineyard. But he's going to come back to Washington for a couple of days to do some work. White House said -- they quite explained that -- they said he wants to have some meetings. Clearly sensitive I think to the idea that you don't want to be on vacation the entire time when there are so many crises around the world. Everybody stay put. Up next, Rand Paul then and now: will his shifting views on some issues help or hurt the GOP presidential hopeful? But first this week's installment of "Politicians Say or Sometimes Do the Darndest Things". New Hampshire Senate hopeful Scott Brown takes a cold shower but it's for a good cause, raising awareness about ALS disease.</s>SCOTT BROWN: Here we go. There is ice, ok? Come on over here, take a peek. There's ice and water -- plenty of ice and water. Here we go. This is sick. Here we go, ready. Ok, here we go. Whoa.