Republican House Speaker John Boehner said that President Obama would need to ask Congress for authority to go to war with ISIS and that the president “clearly” has no strategy to deal with the terrorist group in either Iraq or Syria.
“I think under existing authorizations from the Congress, he has the ability to do this in Iraq,” Boehner said Tuesday night in a phone interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt’s fill-in, California Rep. John Campbell. The interview occurred shortly after ISIS released a video showing its beheading of a second American journalist.
“It’s, I think it’s questionable whether he has the authority to do this in Syria,” Boehner said. “You know, the threat from ISIS goes back well over a year. And the crisis in Syria’s been going on now for over two years. And we’ve asked the president, asked the president what is your strategy to deal with Syria. And clearly, there’s no strategy that’s developed there.”
“Until the president is willing to lay out a plan, the Congress has very few options ahead of it,” Boehner said.
“Well, the president has provided the notification of some of these strikes, even in Iraq, because there’s some ambiguity there in terms of how much authority in Iraq did he have. But if he’s going after ISIS, he would have, I think he would have to provide a war powers notification to the Congress. And then it would be up to the House to make a decision about whether we dealt with the issue or not,” Boehner added.