'This Week' Transcript: Denis McDonough, Sen. Ted Cruz and Gregory Hicks

ABC News ^ | Sept 8, 2013 | This Week

[Innovative]

CRUZ: I think a military attack is a mistake.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Why?

CRUZ: For two reasons. One because I think the administration is proceeding with the wrong objective, an two, because they have no viable plan for success. They are beginning from the wrong objective because this attack is not based on defending U.S. national security.

It is not based on defending Americans or our allies, rather it is explicitly framed by President Obama, by Secretary Kerry, as a defense of what they call international norms. And I don't think that's the job of our military to be defending amorphous international norms.

But just because Assad is a murderous tyrant doesn't mean his opponents are any better. In June, the intelligence showed that the nine major al Qaeda -- of the nine major rebels forces in Syria, at least seven appear to have significant ties to al-Qaeda.

And the problem with this strike is one of two things is possible, either the strike is really significant, it weakens Assad and the result is the rebels are able to succeed, and if what happened there is al-Qaeda taking over, or al Nusra taking over, and extremist terrorists getting access to those chemical weapons, that hurts U.S. national security.

[af_vet_rr]

I never said anything about Assad attacking us.

I'm just saying that Al Qaeda is more of a threat to us than Assad, but you wouldn't know it going by how Obama acts, especially now that Kerry is drawing even more lines in the sand.