Free Republic

As the Syrian civil war rages on, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Sunday on "Face the Nation," what's unfolding is "unfortunately a battlefield situation where [President] Bashar Assad now has the upper hand - and it's tragic - while we sit by and watch." Last week McCain secretly visited the war-torn country to meet with some of the rebel forces taking on Assad, and stepped up his pressure on President Obama to provide them with arms. On Sunday, he called the opposition "very tough - they're battle-hardened. They're very dedicated. They are not al Qaeda; they are not extremists." "We...

You don’t really need more than that headline, do you? Watch McCain’s interview about his Syria trip below and count how many bad arguments there are for intervention. One, at around 2:40, has him arguing that we can “handle” this because, after all, we have the world’s greatest military. That implication, that we should take this challenge on in part to show that we’re equal to it, is both very McCain-esque very unconvincing. If Russian-made Syrian missiles end up shooting down a few American planes, what’s the next step in the challenge that we’re required to accept? If we succeed...

Sen. John McCain Monday became the highest-ranking U.S. official to enter Syria since the bloody civil war there began over two years ago, The Daily Beast has learned. McCain, one of the fiercest critics of the Obama administration’s Syria policy, made the unannounced visit across the Turkey-Syria border with Gen. Salem Idris, the leader of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army. He stayed in the country for several hours before returning to Turkey. Both in Syria and Turkey, McCain and Idris met with assembled leaders of Free Syrian Army units that traveled from around the country to...

WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain’s office is pushing back against reports that while visiting Syria this week he posed in a photo with rebels who kidnapped 11 Lebanese Shi’ite pilgrims. ( Image by Handout/Reuter / Reuters ) The photo, released by McCain’s office, shows McCain with a group of rebels. Among them are two men identified in the Lebanese press as Mohamed Nour and Abu Ibrahim, two of the kidnappers of the group from Lebanon.

WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain’s office is pushing back against reports that while visiting Syria this week he posed in a photo with rebels who kidnapped 11 Lebanese Shi’ite pilgrims. The photo, released by McCain’s office, shows McCain with a group of rebels. Among them are two men identified in the Lebanese press as Mohamed Nour and Abu Ibrahim, two of the kidnappers of the group from Lebanon.