Vocabulary from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Syria

Yes, there are risks to action, but the consequences of inaction are greater and graver still: further humanitarian disaster in Syria, regional instability, the loss of American credibility around the world and an emboldened Iran and North Korea and the disintegration of international law.

This decision will be one of the most difficult any of us will be asked to make, but it is our role as representatives of the American people to make it, to put aside political differences and personal ideologies, to forget partisanship and preconceptions, to forget the polls, the politics and even personal consequences.

It is our responsibility to evaluate the facts, assess the intelligence we have and then debate the wisdom and scope of a military response fully and publicly, understanding its geopolitical ramifications and fully aware of the consequences.

Our friends and allies await our decision, as does the despot in Pyongyang, the ayatollahs of terror in Tehran and terrorist groups wherever they may be.

We know that the Assad regime stockpiled chemical agents including mustard, sarin, and VX gas and has thousands of munitions capable of delivering them.

This is, as you know, a covert action, and as Secretary Kerry noted, probably to go into much more detail would require a closed or classified hearing.

And I know that everybody here on the dais and those who are not take that decision very seriously.

One of my other concerns, Mr. Secretary, is the flood of refugees and their impact on the region.

But it is, to some degree, humiliating to be in a refugee when our policy has been that we are going to train, we're going to equip, we're going to give humanitarian aid to the vetted opposition, and yet, when you sit down with the people we're coalescing around, like General Idris and others, very little of that has occurred.

The president is asking for the authority to do a limited action that will degrade the capacity of a tyrant who has been using chemical weapons to kill his own people.

Now Bashar al-Assad has become the third, and I think all of you know that history holds nothing but infamy for those criminals, and history reserves also very little sympathy for their enablers.

Forcing Assad to change his calculation about his ability to act with impunity can contribute to his realization that he cannot gas or shoot his way out of his predicament.

This is not the time for armchair isolationism.

If the world's worst despots see that they can flout with impunity prohibitions against the world's worst weapons, then those prohibitions are just pieces of paper.

The Assad regime under increasing pressure by the Syrian opposition could feel empowered to carry out even more devastating chemical weapons attacks without a response.

So I believe -- as Secretary Kerry said, and so I'll reiterate it -- that not only has our president drawn a line, a red line, on the use of chemical weapons, and not only has the world done so, but we in the Senate, we did so.

KERRY: Well, Senator I would say unequivocally that the president's actions will make us more secure, less likely that Assad can use his weapons or chooses to use his weapons, and the absence of taking the action the president has asked for will, in fact, be far more threatening and dangerous and potentially ultimately cost lives.

Let me ask you this: In the process of achieving those two goals that you just outlined, would there not be a collateral consequence to the regime of further degrading its overall capabilities?

The alternative is that you stand back and do nothing and Syria in fact implodes, becomes an enclave state, there are huge ungoverned spaces, al-Nusra, al-Qaida, Hezbollah, others become more of a threat to our friends in the region, and the region becomes much more of a sectarian conflagration.

I think that subsequent to that, we would probably return to have a discussion about what we might do with the moderate opposition in a -- in a more overt way.

BOXER: So I'm going to make a brief statement because a lot of people have been asking me -- including my own constituents -- on how I view this.

And this is key: that Iran will view us as a paper tiger, when it comes to their nuclear program, and that is dangerous not only for us and our friends but for the world.

And our indications are, in many regards, that that's the way they view it, there may be more weapons to sell as a result of weapons sold, but it's not going to elicit some kind of major confrontation.

Thirty-one nations have stated publicly that the Assad regime is responsible, and I think we're at about 34 countries have indicated that if the allegations are true that they would support some form of action against Syria.

Israel may decide it needs to strike Iran unilaterally.

DEMPSEY: Well, Senator, I think the -- it may be even more insidious than that.

I agree that we should not turn our back on such a blatant violation of international norms with respect to the use of chemical weapons, and that if we stand quietly by while a tyrant like Assad uses chemical weapons on his own people, that we will be giving carte blanche to any dictator anywhere in the world to develop and use chemical weapons.

I agree that we should not turn our back on such a blatant violation of international norms with respect to the use of chemical weapons, and that if we stand quietly by while a tyrant like Assad uses chemical weapons on his own people, that we will be giving carte blanche to any dictator anywhere in the world to develop and use chemical weapons.

JOHNSON: General Dempsey, how confident are you that you can calibrate, tailor, fine-tune military action that doesn't have spillover effects, so we that we keep it to the limited, stated goal of, I guess, degrading and deterring?

I mean, it seems like -- and this is more of an impression I have as opposed to any exact knowledge, but it seems like initially, the opposition was maybe more Western-leaning, more moderate, more democratic, and as time has gone by, it's degraded, become more infiltrated by al-Qaida.

We already have more partners ready to do something kinetic than the military feels, under this particular operation, we need to effect that.

My view, as I've watched both the images on TV that were presented at the beginning of this hearing and as I've spoken to family and friends and neighbors at home, is that we face a real risk here if we do not act, that this is an instance where one of the world's worst dictators has steadily ratcheted up an ascending crescendo of death in his own nation.

DURBIN: I guess my question to you, Mr. Secretary, Secretary Kerry, is in light of the vulnerability of these countries, what has been the response of the Arab and Muslim world to this?

KERRY: All I want to -- all I want to say to you is that there were leaks, which are the bane of everybody's existence, and the fact is that the newspapers began to carry stories about a strike in targeting well before any decisions were made, and that began a process of moving.

After the fiasco of Iraq and over a decade of war, how can can this administration make a guarantee that our military actions will be limited?

And that's this: Will our action lessen the acuity of that moral atrocity or advance or national security interest?

Why would he release chemical weapons on his own people when it brought the anger and enmity of the entire world?

The fact that they -- we have not done enough to demonstrate that Russia has essentially become a pariah nation by being pro-chemical weapons.

MARKEY: So would it be wise for us to wait for that information from the United Nations in order to ensure that there is a signal sent to the international community as to the veracity as to the analysis by the United States that chemical weapons have been used?

But that itself is an intercept, an actual conversation now out in public that shows the regime acknowledging its own culpability and expressing fear about the U.N. discovering it.