Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has thrown his support behind President Barack Obama's controversial plan to arm moderate Syrian rebels in the war against the Islamic State.
Although the Republican governors have blamed Obama's sheepish foreign policy for the terror group's rise to power, Jindal urged Congress to give their backing to the president's bid to fund and train the rebels to fight the Sunni extremists,
The Hill reported.
"I do personally think he has the authority in this case to do limited strikes," Jindal said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast in Washington, adding that "absolutely Congress should support the administration's request" to finance and give weapons to the Free Syrian Army.
"This is a terrorist group that threatens U.S. interests," he said of the Islamic
State, also known as ISIS.
Sen. John McCain, who is in favor of arming the moderates, blasted fellow Republican Sen. Rand Paul this week for his opposition to the plan.
Jindal's support came as the GOP introduced an amendment on the spending bill that would help finance the rebels who are fighting on two fronts, against Syrian President Bashar Assad's loyalist forces as well as brutal ISIS insurgents. The bill could come up for a vote as early as Wednesday, The Hill said.
During his remarks, Jindal also ripped into Obama again for "leading from behind," saying that "his dithering, his delaying has allowed" ISIS time to increase in strength and "made the world more dangerous."
Jindal also attacked the White House for failing to do enough to harness the nation's energy potential, while calling administration officials "science deniers," a play on the expression "climate change deniers" thrown up by environmentalists against GOP politicians like Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe.
"The reality is right now we've got an administration in the Obama administration that are science deniers when it comes to harnessing America's energy resources and potential to create good-paying jobs for our economy and for our future," said Jindal, the
Associated Press reports.
"Right now we've got an administration whose policies are holding our economy hostage. It's not controversial to say human activity is contributing in some way to [climate] change. In terms of how much it is and how serious it is, I say let the scientists decide that. Let's not have politicians decide that."
The Obama administration has said that man-made greenhouse gases are to blame for the Earth's heating up, and plans to bring in new regulations to curb carbon emissions.
Jindal, a possible contender for the White House race in 2016, admitted during the breakfast meeting that he's thinking about running for the GOP presidential nomination.
"There's no reason to be coy," he said. "I am thinking, I am praying about whether I'll run in 2016. I said I won't make that decision until after November."