david, i had some degree of difficulty hearing everything that you said, but, again, i think the administration is basically saying to russia, look, don t do anything overt, don t come across the border with the 40,000 troops, don t embarrass us in that way, but you can continue to undermine the sovereignty of ukraine by doing the things that you ve done, and, again, i ve urged in every way i can for this administration to go ahead and, again, push back now. it s going to be too late, just like we did in syria where in essence let s face it, the wisest thing, i hate to say such a crass thing on easter sunday morning, the wisest thing that assad did really was to kill 1,200 people with chemical weapons because in essence we said don t embarrass us anymore that way. you can go ahead and kill another 60,000 people with barrel bombs and by other means, but don t embarrass us, and i think that s what we re saying
david, i had some degree of difficulty hearing everything that you said, but, again, i think the administration is basically saying to russia, look, don t do anything overt, don t come across the border with the 40,000 troops, don t embarrass us in that way, but you can continue to undermine the sovereignty of ukraine by doing the things that you ve done, and, again, i ve urged in every way i can for this administration to go ahead and, again, push back now. it s going to be too late, just like we did in syria where in essence let s face it, the wisest thing, i hate to say such a crass thing on easter sunday morning, the wisest thing that assad did really was to kill 1,200 people with chemical weapons because in essence we said don t embarrass us anymore that way. you can go ahead and kill another 60,000 people with barrel bombs and by other means, but don t embarrass us, and i think that s what we re saying to russia today by the actions that we re not taking.
the country, as i talk to former diplomats, you have to worry day by day the lesson that is putin is drawing from this. he wanted crimea, he took crimea, there was no penalty. he put forces on the border, they re still there. he s already, it looks like, violated this agreement just after a couple of days. so how then do you have a strong, clear message that says to him, okay, we re done here. you can t go any further? senator corker, first to you. david, i had some degree of difficulty hearing everything that you said, but, again, i think the administration is basically saying to russia, look, don t do anything overt, don t come across the border with the 40,000 troops, don t embarrass us in that way, but you can continue to undermine the sovereignty of ukraine by doing the things that you ve done, and, again, i ve urged in every way i can for this administration to go ahead and, again, push back now. it s going to be too late, just like we did in syria where in essence let s face i