• McCain compares Iranian leader to monkey; draws GOP charge of racism

    Matthias Schrader / AP

    Sen. John McCain

    By Domenico Montanaro, Deputy Political Editor, NBC News

    Updated 12:52 pm ET. Always one to speak -- or Tweet -- his mind, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) Monday made a joke comparing Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a monkey, something one Republican congressman charged was “racist.”

    “So Ahmadinejad wants to be first Iranian in space - wasn't he just there last week?” McCain said in a tweet that also linked to a story about Iran launching a monkey into space.

    Some didn’t take so kindly to the not-so-diplomatic quip, prompting McCain, 76, to respond: “Re: Iran space tweet - lighten up folks, can't everyone take a joke?”

    Seeing that, Michigan congressman Rep. Justin Amash, 32, shot back.

    “Maybe you should wisen up & not make racist jokes,” Amash tweeted.

    Not everyone on the right agreed with Amash. Conservative John Podhoretz, for example, Tweeted this: "How dare McCain say something demeaning & disparaging abt the foremost anti-Semite on the planet." And this: "So...it's defend-the-Jew-hater-from-the-war-hero day." 

    It’s not the first time McCain’s made a joke about Iran that landed him in some hot water. During his run for president in 2007, McCain sang about bombing the country.

    Asked by a GOP primary voter when the U.S. would send an “air-mail message to Tehran,” McCain said, “That old Beach Boys’ song, ‘Bomb Iran?’ Bomb, bomb, bomb—, anyway.”

    McCain’s response then as now? It’s just a joke -- "get a life.”

    “When veterans are together, veterans joke,” McCain said at the time. “And I was with veterans and we were joking. And if somebody can’t understand that, my answer is, ‘Please, get a life.’”

  • 3 US senators warn about the risks of inaction in Syria

    By NBC News staff

    Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Lindsey Graham, R.-S.C., and Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., have penned a Washington Post op-ed warning that the United States' reluctance to provide assistance to opposition fighters against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces could harm U.S. interests. 

    "America’s disengagement from this conflict carries growing costs — for the Syrian people and for U.S. interests," Sunday's op-ed read, adding that the United States is "increasingly seen across the Middle East as acquiescing to the continued slaughter of Arab and Muslim civilians."

    Slideshow: The lives of Syrian rebels

    NBC News

    People resisting the army of President Bashar al-Assad in northern Syria cope with loss and prepare for fighting.

    Launch slideshow

    Syria premier defects to anti-Assad opposition, spokesman says

    In contrast to Libya, where there is "profound gratitude" after the U.S. intervened on the side of the rebels last year in their struggle to depose longtime leader Moammar Gadhafi, "when the Assad regime finally does fall, the Syrian people are likely to feel little goodwill toward the United States," the senators wrote.

    Much more than in Libya, moreover, the United States has significant national security interests at stake in Syria. These include preventing the use or transfer of the regime’s massive chemical- and biological-weapons stockpiles — a real and growing danger — and ensuring that al-Qaida and its violent brethren are unable to secure a new foothold in the heart of the Middle East. Our decisions and actions have been woefully insufficient to safeguard these interests and others.

    The senators' voices follow those of foreign policy experts, three of whom urged the United States last week to do more to bring the violence in Syria to an end.


    Foreign policy experts urge US to intervene in Syria

    Testifying before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Martin Indyk, vice president and director of Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution; James Dobbins, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the RAND National Defense Research Institute; and Andrew Tabler, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, all agreed that the United States should start arming the Syrian opposition under the right conditions.

    "At this point, given the direction of the conflict, I think that what we need to do is assess which groups could we and should we arm at what point, and make that decision," Tabler told the senators. "I think that we're actually at that decision given where the conflict is going."

    Indyk agreed, but advocated for intervening in a "wise way."

    "We need to do it in a way that, first of all, we understand who we're supporting and what their intentions are," he said.

    On Monday, Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab defected to the opposition seeking to overthrow Assad, a spokesman for Hijab said, marking one of the most high-profile desertions from the Damascus government. 

    Syrian state TV said Hijab had been fired, but an official source in Amman told Reuters that the dismissal followed his defection to neighboring Jordan with his family.

    Despite this and other high-profile defections, the senators' op-ed warns that "Bashar al-Assad’s regime is far from finished," and its "indiscriminate violence against civilians, using tanks and artillery, helicopter gunships, militias, snipers and, for the first time, fighter aircraft" will continue.

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  • Politicians visit Syrian refugee camp in Turkey

    Umit Bektas / Reuters

    U.S. Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman greet Syrian refugees during their visit at Yayladagi refugee camp in Hatay province on the Turkish-Syrian border April 10.

    Umit Bektas / Pool via EPA

    U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, meets Syrian refugee children during his visit at Yayladagi refugee camp in Hatay, on the Turkish-Syrian border in Turkey, April 10. Annan's visit was first announced last weekend in response to Turkish calls for international help in coping with the increasing number of refugees arriving from Syria. On April 9, two Syrian refugees were killed and 19 were injured, including two Turks working at the camp.

    Visitors to the Syrian refugee camp in Turkey included envoy Kofi Annan and U.S. Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman. Turkey is struggling to cope with 25,000 Syrians who have already crossed the border seeking refuge from the ongoing violence. Today, the cease fire is supposed to begin, but France is already calling Assad's promise a 'blatant lie.'

    Updated: McCain and Lieberman repeated their calls for arming the Syrian rebels.

  • McCain calls for US-led airstrikes on Assad forces

    Senator John McCain calls for an end to "the slaughter of innocent lives" in Syria through a US-led international effort to protect the population while launching airstrikes on Assad forces.

    By msnbc.com staff

    Arizona Sen. John McCain called for American-led airstrikes on President Bashar Assad's forces in Syria. McCain says the goal of the U.S.-led air strikes should be to establish and defend safe havens for delivering humanitarian and military aid in Syria.

    "Providing military assistance to the Free Syrian Army and other opposition groups is necessary, but at this late hour, that alone will not be sufficient to stop the slaughter and save innocent lives," McCain said. "The only realistic way to do so is with foreign air power."

    McCain called for the airstrikes in a Senate floor speech on Monday afternoon.

    The speech emphasized that "the United States should lead an international effort to protect key population centers in Syria, especially in the north, through airstrikes on Assad's forces."

    Syrians have right to defend themselves, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister says

    "To be clear: This will require the United States to suppress enemy air defenses in at least part of the country," McCain said.

    The Arizona senator added that the mass atrocities that NATO intervened in Libya to prevent in Benghazi are now a reality in Homs. "Indeed, Syria today is the scene of some of the worst state-sponsored violence since Milosevic’s war crimes in the Balkans, or Russia’s annihilation of the Chechen city of Grozny," he said.

    McCain commended the Obama administration's efforts in orchestrating international sanctions against the Assad regime, but added that the policy of diplomacy is increasingly disconnected from the dire conditions on the ground in Syria.

    "In the face of this new reality, the Administration’s approach to Syria is starting to look more like a hope than a strategy," he said. "So, too, does their continued insistence that Assad’s fall is ‘inevitable.’"

    Read the full text of Sen. John McCain's remarks

    The conflict in Syria started last March with protests calling for the ouster of authoritarian President Assad in some of the country's impoverished hinterlands.

    The protests spread as the government waged a bloody crackdown on dissent, and many in the opposition have taken up arms to defend themselves and attack government troops. The U.N. says more than 7,500 people have been killed in the uprising.

    McCain explained that the United States also has a clear national security interest in stopping the violence in Syria and forcing Assad to leave power. The current regime supported Palestinian terrorist groups and funneled arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon, he said, adding that it also remains a committed enemy of Israel.

    “The ultimate goal of airstrikes should be to establish and defend safe havens in Syria, especially in the north, in which opposition forces can organize and plan their political and military activities against Assad," McCain said.

    Since Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria, a concerted course of action similar to the one in Libya is not likely, but McCain said a joint military mandate is still feasible. He gave the example of NATO's 1999 intervention in Kosovo, which took place without a formal authorization from the U.N.

    "The Syrian people deserve to succeed, and shame on us if we fail to help them,” the senator concluded.

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