Petty Officer 1st Class Daniel Hinton / U.S. Air Force

General Martin Dempsey testifying Thursday.

“Senator, would you agree that we have recent experience where until we understood how the country would continue to govern and that institutions of governance wouldn't fail, that actually, situations can be made worse by the introduction of military force?”
— Army General Martin Dempsey, jousting Thursday with Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., over the wisdom of U.S. military involvement in Syria at an armed services committee hearing. The spat led McCain to place a hold on Dempsey’s nomination to serve a second two-year term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs, meaning it can’t proceed until McCain removes that hold. It wasn’t clear whether Dempsey was referring to Afghanistan, Iraq, or both.
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