Panetta and Gates Question Obama’s Syria Strategy

President Obama’s first two defense secretaries questioned his Syria strategy and said they would have told him not to seek Congress’ approval for a strike on President Bashar Assad’s forces, the Air Force Times reports.

“Speaking at a forum in Dallas, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta disagreed on whether the United States should ultimately carry out a military strike in retaliation for a chemical attack that the U.S. says killed 1,400 people. But both men said Obama shouldn’t have asked Congress to approve a strike, and both were skeptical and sometimes sarcastic about the current Russia-backed negotiations to have Syria turn over its chemical weapons.”