On Friday night, Rachel Maddow analyzed what she considers to be a series of "increasingly aggressive" statements by the Obama administration regarding actions against the Islamic militant group ISIS in Iraq and in Syria.
Since video of the beheading of journalist James Foley emerged last week, the Obama administration has sounded increasingly bellicose with regards to the militant faction in Iraq and its extension across the border in Syria.
Specifically, Maddow pointed to a statement by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey's at a recent press conference that the U.S. could contain ISIS in Iraq, but not "in perpetuity" without taking some action in Syria, where the group gets supplies, weapons and materiel.
"The answer is no," Dempsey said. "That will have to be addressed eventually on both sides of what is now a non-existent border."
Furthermore, White House spokesperson Ben Rhodes said on Friday that U.S. action in Syria is now actively under consideration again.
"We're not going to be restricted by borders," he said.
"Happy Friday," said Maddow. "Now what's on the table is war inside Syria. Not war with Syria but maybe some kind of war in Syria against ISIS."
"Who all is weighing in on this decision?" she asked. "Can the White House just make that decision on their own?"
Has the White House already made that decision, she asked? Has Congress?
"Is this about to be a new war?" said Maddow. The way this is going, she said, and from the tone of Defense Secretary Chuck Hegel and Gen. Dempsey, "it isn't all that clear that we're thinking all that Constitutionally on that subject of a potential new war, right now."
Maddow's book, Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, dealt with disconnection of recent administrations from the traditional decision chain of making war.
Watch the video, embedded below via MSNBC:
