In Syria, a no-fly zone targeted at Assad's air force and safe zones for refugees fleeing the fighting would help tamp down the death toll that plays into the hands of ISIS and other Sunni militants who can position themselves as the only groups that are really defending the Sunni population.
I can reveal today that the U.S. government has information to indicate that individuals tied to terrorist groups in Syria have already attempted to gain access to our country through the U.S. refugee program.
No one doubts that innocent men, women and children have been the victims of chemical weapons attacks in Syria. And there's no doubt who is responsible for this heinous use of chemical weapons in Syria: the Syrian regime.
For years, Iran has worked to position itself to dominate the entire Middle East and to impose its version of radical Islam on society. It is actively working to destabilize Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria.
Very few people are fortunate enough to walk through countries like Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, and I had seen them all. I had spoken to many on the street.
We can only query against that which we have collected. And so if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home, but there will be nothing show up because we have no record of them.
The Egyptians could run to Egypt, the Syrians into Syria. The only place we could run was into the sea, and before we did that we might as well fight.
I'm over here with the French counterterrorism experts talking about the 'Charlie Hebdo' case, how we can stop foreign fighters from coming out of Iraq and Syria to Europe, but then we have this phenomenon in the United States where they can be activated by the Internet, and, really, terrorism has gone viral.
When I turn on the news in Paris, the way Syria is covered is different from the way it is covered in Washington, D.C., or London. Even in Western society, where we hold all the values of democracy and freedom of speech, as soon as you point a camera in a particular direction, there is an angle - literally and figuratively.
I grew up as an only child with a single mother. Because we were poor and because I knew my father had emigrated from Syria, I imagined he looked like Omar Sharif.
Candidate Trump held out his hand to Vladimir Putin. He rejected further U.S. intervention in Syria other than to smash ISIS.
If you want to hear arguments against deploying a big U.S. ground force in Syria, just ask a general.
I think there are real dangers to escalating military conflict with ISIS, and we need to be aware of them. But at the same time, you have to understand, you know, that this whole thing started with Bashar al-Assad and how he is the one who continued to escalate against the people of Syria who were trying to get democratic reform.
Like a nuclear disaster, the fallout from the meltdown of Syria threatens to be with us for decades, and the longer it is permitted to continue, the more severe the damage will be.
While sanctions against Iran and Syria are intended to constrain those countries' governments, they have had the unfortunate side effect of constraining activists' access to free online software and services used widely across the Middle East, including browsers, online chat applications, and online storage services.
The central problem in Syria is that Sunni Arabs will not be willing partners against the Islamic State unless we commit to protect them and the broader Syrian population against all enemies, not just ISIS.
Once you start bombing in Syria, when you start looking for targets, there will be a lot.
Importantly, rather than being solely concerned with U.N. approval, the president must come first to our own Congress for authorization, and I urge him to do so. Finally, I understand the impulse to take action in Syria; however, I hope the president carefully considers this matter and resists the call from some to use military force in Syria.
The issue with Syria, I think for many of us, has always been about Iran. This is an anchor point for them in terms of regional domination. It means a lot to them. They are all in here.
The president needs to make certain an absolutely thorough vetting system is in place that will not allow terrorists from Syria or any other part of the world into our country.
We have evidence that a number of Bahrainis who oppose our government are being trained in Syria. I have seen the files and we have notified the Syrian authorities, but they deny any involvement.
I have sympathy for the people in Syria, and I do think there should be a worldwide response, but we should act cautiously.
The Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al Qaeda in Iraq are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria.
Despite what you hear in the news from the Obama administration and the military, our strategy of conducting infrequent airstrikes and re-taking pockets of Iraq and Syria terrain will only help us achieve short-lived tactical victories.
Both Iraq and Syria are a fissile mixture of ethnicities and religions thrown together after Versailles by departing French and British imperialists and only kept together by Baathist tyranny and violence.
I don't want to be overly dramatic, but Iraq and Syria are gone, and they aren't coming back, at least not as centralized states.
Russia holds a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. This is a privilege, and it is a responsibility. Yet in Syria and in Aleppo, Russia is abusing this historic privilege.
In many cases, Obama's exercise of authoritarian power is criminal. His executive branch is responsible for violations of the Arms Export Control Act in shipping weapons to Syria, the Espionage Act in Libya, and IRS law with regard to the targeting of conservative groups.
The United States and its Gulf allies, some of who are actively funding rebel groups in Syria, should undertake a serious joint review of Jordan's needs and then act together to meet them.
Trump has long been a fan of Vladimir Putin but seems to be unaware that Russia's goal in Syria is simply the maintenance of its longtime ally President Bashar al-Assad in power. Indeed, Moscow has hitherto shown little appetite to focus on ISIS.
Syria should not belong to one family, to one coterie, or to one party. It belongs to all the people of Syria equally, in all their religious and ethnic diversity.
ISIS is even at war with its most natural ally, al Qaeda in Syria.
I think the attempt to draw a comparison between Iran and Syria is false, misleading and dangerous.
Every Arab 'republic' has been a republic of fear, but only Saddam Hussein's Iraq surpassed the Assads' Syria in number of victims.
According to the FBI and the director of national intelligence, Syria's becoming a perfect platform to strike our nation. I've got a very simple strategy as your president against ISIL. Whatever it takes, as long as it takes, to defeat them.
You can watch a little bit of war from your nice living room - 30 seconds of what's going on in Syria - and when you've had enough, switch over to some celebrity programme. We live our life through screens and images in this way, and we don't know what is real or fake anymore. It doesn't matter.