President Barack Obama's request to Congress for Authorization for Use of Military Force is a "first step" to understanding the White House strategy to defeat the Islamic State (ISIS), Sen. Bob Corker told MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
Corker, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the debate over the authorization would allow Congress to have not only an "impact on how we move ahead in Iraq, but especially in Syria, where all of us understand that, at present, there is no real ground game."
The Tennessee Republican continued: "This is the first step. I think all of us understand the importance of this.
"It's the most important vote that any senator or House member takes. And, so now it's our turn, in a measured way, to walk through this, and to have testimony from the administration, the president, sell this to the American people."
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Obama
presented Congress with his request for war authorization against ISIS on Wednesday morning, asking lawmakers to "authorize the continued use of military force to degrade and defeat ISIL."
Corker said Congress would be "seeking to understand what strategy the White House and the administration has to deal with ISIL," adding that, so far, it had been "very difficult to understand what the pathway to success is."
On Tuesday, the family of
aid worker Kayla Mueller announced that information they received indicated she had been killed by ISIS, becoming the fourth American to die at the hands of the militant group.
Corker said Congress hoped to be able to develop a "strategy of containment" to shape the campaign against ISIS "in a different way, so the thing that happened to Kayla, and has happened to so many others, does not happen again, or at least we move in a direction to eliminate that threat."
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