Him off the face of the earth was in the best interest of the United States. With such an act would advance the cause of interest and policies of our country or precipitate another war in the middle east . The answer is increasingly upon us rightdoublequote,. All is well. That is what donald trump said hours after a dozen missiles were fired at two United States and literary last night. That is what he said, as thousands of troops ready to deploy to the middle east to a hotbed of anger where wearing an American Flag on your shoulder is more dangerous by the day. Thats what he said as we careened to a unauthorized war of his own making. Born out of his illiteracy in matters of foreign policy. Donald trump never deigned to put on u the uniform of this grt nation using his fathers money to buy his way out of military service when his country needed him in vietnam. Let me make something clear to donald trump. All is certainly not well when war is on the horizon just because you want it to look like the toughest kid on the playground. Im incredibly thankful no americans were killed last night in irans rebuttal attack but some missed missiles should be no cause for salvation for the president s. Just because there werent fatalities yesterday doesnt mean there wont be any tragedies tomorrow. We got into this situation because of trumps glibness and pumping his chest and the roar it got from fox news because he was so enamored by maximum pressure that he laughed at the idea of even minimum diplomacy and now, america is left as a result. All is certainly not well, mr. President. Sadly, trumps glibness is shocking but not surprising. Last weekend he was at his golf course in florida while more and more american troops were packing and getting ready to deploy 7000 miles east. He was tweeting from our lago while the Iraqi Parliament was voting to expel u. S. Service members from their nation and rubbing soldiers with voluble millionaires from the comfort of his country club while the u. S. Led coalition against isis was esannouncing that we no longer have the resources to fight isis and iraq but instead we have two hunker down and focus on protecting our troops from the act of revenge that iran has promised art on the way. A potential global conflict is very closer by the hour. It is because of donald trump because of impetuous nests and ignorance. Once again hes been manipulated by a hostile regime into decisions that further their goals all endangered the security of the nation trusts supposed to be leading. When i went to iraq in 2004 i saw firsthand just how eager the country was to shake off irans influence and i watched as anti Iran Protests continued long after i flew my last mission and young iraqi spoke out against iran allll of his back in baghdd just this past history bring. Protests tens of thousands of iraqis flooded the streets raising voices, picket signs and demanding that they will crawl out from under tehran some. Now, after donald trump decided to kill Major General soleimani on sovereignho baghdad soil thoe same streets are now filled with protesters once more that this time they are marching inun solidarity with the enemy that hundreds of iraqis died marching against just a few short weeks ago. With one choice donald chop squandered the opportunity that existed to push against iranian influence and for greater sstability in the middle east. In one fell swoop he somehow managed to villain eyes the United States and victimize iran, our enemy. It isolates us from our longterm partner and iraq and ramping up the influence of the country that everyone knows is vital to our security interest throughout the middle east. Iran did not want trump to kill soleimani but they were hungry for all that it happened as a result. They were starving to go on the offensive and desperate to change the narrative and to swing Public Opinion and solidified their power and iraq and have an new enter excuse to attack anyone with American Flag on their shoulder and to shrug off the restraints of the nuclear deal. Like a pawn in a game of chess he did not seem to know he was plain trump was dated into having the like a child blind to congresses, ignorant of his own ignorance he is given iraq everything they could have asked for in the end making it far more likely that tomorrow or next week or next month more americans will be set into another one of thet forever wars he has bragged that he and he alone t would be able to end. We use to have the monroe doctrine, truman doctrine and now we have the trump doctrine. In which the leader of the free world, commanderinchief of the greatest fighting force ever assembled get manipulated again and again by dictators of hostile regimes. S weve already seen it too many times since he was sworn into office. We seen it played out on the streets of venezuela in the deserts of northeast syria and we seen them get manipulated by pyongyang despots as our allies laughed, literally laughed, at him behind his back. All these dictators and hostile regimes no they are realizing the sameto thing that the president of the United States is easy to control as a toddler. Thump your chest, issue schoolyard threats and youve got him. Im he will fall for it every time. He will do your bidding as if it is your own. I wish this werent true but my diaper wearing 20 month old daughter has better impulse control than this president. Kids in School Cafeterias note not to look up when someone tells them they are gullible is written on the ceiling but im pretty sure donald trump, a man whoso once stared directly intoa solar eclipse, could be caught stealing a glance just to be sure. The thing is trump told us we was long before he stepped into the oval office and too many chose not to believe him. As a socalled businessman he left a string of bankruptcies where everyone destroying both companies and but now as commanderinchief his incompetence has caught us standing in the world and endangered our National Security in place of bigger targets on our deployed troops. Now, the currency he is spending isnt just the money that his father left him but the blood of the men and women sworn an oath to defend this nation to their deaths. Sixteen years ago i was one of the Many Americans who deployed to iraq and one of the many who is willing to sacrifice everything after our commanderinchief convinced congress that our nations degree depended on removing Saddam Hussein and replacing his regime with a democracy. A decade and half later we have spent trillions of dollars to achieve that goal and hundreds of thousands of iraqi civilians have been killed or displaced and thousands have died for that and tens of thousands more have been wounded and maimed. We did not sacrifice all of that for this president to turn our iraq he partners into adversaries who vote to kick us out of the very democracies we helped to build. I have friends who have done eight, nine, ten tours in iraq who go each time knowing they will probably be back on the same stretch of sand in the next couple of years who probably answer the call and who continue to answer the call fighting for it that patch of desert over and over again because they believe, they believe us when we tell them that will make america safer and more secure. They gain a few feet one tour, lose an intro to the next and watched their buddies lose limbs or lives over that same piece of ground time and time again and those who show up ready to do their job whenever they ask, no matter what. We need to honor that and we need to honor their willingness to show up and carry out the mission and now, especially after that attack last night, we in congress can honor them by doing our job and we are the branch vested mostly with that solemn duty of declaring war so we need to exert our constitutional control out of this outofcontrol toddler in chief and vote to prevent him from putting us in another war without legal authorization frof congress. This moment, at this precipice, we need to do whatever we can to break the cycle of escalation and we need not just something but diplomacy. Dont get me wrong. Im glad this general is dead or he was responsible for the death of hundreds of American Service members the last decade. I also want to stop iranian influence but this decision by this president an has not done that. If we truly want to honor our heroes in uniform we will not send them into harms way without a clear discussion of the mission we are asking them to carry out and the consequences for both them and our nation and then after we have that discussion, if we still believe war is the right path and i will vote yes but so far trump has not even managed to come to us to give us his reasons or his actions. Having never sacrificed much himself he does not understand our troops sacrifices. Having having served anything but his own selfinterest he does not give a Second Thought to their service, treating their dedication to our nation with a kind of reckless abandon he did with the cash he blew through with each of his bankruptcies. I dont need to remind anyone the dog trump is a five draft dodger but his ignorance is not just captured by the privilege he showed when he dodged service in vietnam. No, its also revealed that his brazen use of torture in good order and discipline and his stated desire to commit war crimes. I implore my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to recognize our commanderinchief or who he really is. Don trump will never willingly cut the puppet springs that Vladimir Putin in conjunction own are using to make him dance. We need a Strong Majority in the senate to force such an action to discuss the and until th then, dictators will continue to have access to the worlds most powerful marionette and we will all suffer the consequences. With that, i yield the floor. Senators are now meeting behind closed doors with intelligence and military officials about iran. We have live coverage when the senate dabbles back into session. Members of the Trump Administration met with house members this afternoon. Here is some of their reaction. [inaudible conversations]