Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) has one of the quietest, yet potentially most important, forces in the debate to intervene in the Syrian civil war given Congress’ power to declare war. Today, Reid provided the clearest picture yet of his position. In short: While Reid is wary of getting more involved in Syria, if the President wants to go to war, Reid said he won’t need Senate authorization to do it.

At a roundtable interview for reporters on Wednesday, ThinkProgress asked Reid whether or not President Obama could impose a no-fly zone — that is, use military force against Syrian air assets to prevent them from bombing rebel forces and civilians — without explicit Congressional permission, meaning either a declaration of war or explicit authorization for the use of military force. The Senator strongly cautioned against getting more deeply involved in Syria, but implied it was ultimately the President’s call:

We have about 80,000 people dead, Assad’s a war criminal – and if there is this peace conference, and I hope it works, part of the deal has to be that he’s gone. I don’t think at this stage [pause] less than ten percent of the deaths caused by the non-regime forces are caused by helicopters and missiles. That’s still a lot of people, but I’m not going to run the President’s foreign policy, we know that there are a lot of countries, a significant number of countries providing weapons there, and we’re doing a lot of food, medical supplies, and things of those [sic] nature. We have to be very careful about how we proceed down the next step.

A Senate Democratic aide clarified to ThinkProgress that Reid would defer to the President on both the advisability of a no-fly zone and what legal authorization would be required for the President to lawfully implement one:

The decision on whether a no-fly zone would be advisable, and under what authorities it might be established, is best placed in the hands of the commander-in-chief. Without question, should President Obama decide on such a course, it would be imprudent for him to proceed without first consulting Congress.

The phrase “under what authorities it might be established” is a reference to legal authority for the use of force; suggesting a decision on this issue “is best placed in the hands of the commander-in-chief” amounts to saying that the President is free to make a decision on whether he has the legal authority to establish a no-fly zone, though it would be “imprudent” to make such a decision without discussing it with Congress first.

This stance is consistent with the Senator’s position during the Libya intervention, the last major U.S. military engagement initiated without Congressional approval. While the War Powers Resolution requires the President to end unauthorized military options 60 or 90 days after they begin, U.S. troops remained involved in operations against Libyan forces beyond that window.

The Obama administration argued that these operations mainly involved logistical and technical support for other NATO and local forces, meaning that they were not “hostilities” in the technical legal sense used in the War Powers Act despite the fact that some U.S. forces were still engaged in direct combat. Reid backed this position, arguing that “The War Powers Act has no application to what’s going on in Libya.”

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has confirmed that the administration is weighing the direct provision of weapons to Syrian rebels. As the situation in Syria deteriorates, regional powers and U.S. lawmakers are attempting to pressure the administration into taking a more direct military role in the conflict.

An Indiana congressman suggested cutting the United States’ foreign aid budget — choking off supplies to refugees around the world — to keep a Navy stunt pilot group in the air.

Earlier this month, Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-IN) gave a sit-down interview with local television station WJTS, and when sequestration came up, Buchson was saddened by the grounding of the Navy’s Blue Angels stunt flying group.

Luckily, Bucshon knows where to cut the federal budget to make room for the Angels to take to the sky again — the U.S.’ foreign aid overseas:

BUSCHON: Well, it costs about $37 million for the Blue Angels to fly for an entire year. Okay. The President just went overseas and offered some — Jordan, $150 million in more aid. We just offered other countries millions of dollars in more foreign aid. Yet we can’t continue to fund one of the biggest promoters of the military that helps them with recruiting and also has such a big impact on local economies when they show up for their airshows. That we have to not do that yet we can give millions of dollars in foreign aid when we’re holding back on our own citizens.

Watch the interview here:

The funding Buschon describes serves an important purpose. During his trip to Jordan in March, President Obama announced an increase in U.S. funding to Syrian refugees who fled the ongoing conflict in their country. Over 500,000 Syrian refugees currently make their home in Jordan, with the 175,000 in the Zartarri refugee camp making it the 5th largest city in the country. Even with the Obama administration’s pledge, the funding request for humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees remains more than $500 million short of what’s needed.

Buschon, unfortunately, isn’t alone in his desire to cut out crucial foreign aid to reduce federal spending. The already treacherous ground for increasing foreign aid has only grown more fraught since the impact of sequestration kicked in. His fellow Republicans — often citing foreign aid as a much greater percentage of the budget than the less than 1 percent it currently makes up — have been seeking to reduce international funding since retaking the House of Representatives in 2011.

For the second time in less than two weeks, Syria has disappeared from the internet, just as opposition forces attacked the main prison in Aleppo in an attempt to free hundreds of regime opponents. The outage started around 10:00 am local time with traffic disappearing and Syrian government websites including the state news agency SANA also going down.

A Syrian communications department official speaking on the condition of anonymity to the Associated Press claimed the outage was the result of a an internet cable cut in a Damascus suburb and would take around four hours to restore. However, internet outages in Syria have historically come at tactically significant times for the regime — for example when it was rumored that government forces were mixing chemical weapons last November or during a rare public address by Assad in January.

Experts say the outage resembles the one that occurred around this time last week, with James Cowe, chief technology officer at internet research firm Renesys telling the AP:

It looks like a replay of what happened on the seventh and eighth [...] It’s entirely consistent with a technical fault at a central facility; it’s also completely consistent with a decision to use an Internet kill switch.

Other regimes facing upheaval have shut down the internet using a “kill switch” before to stunt the organizing ability of opposition forces — most notably Egyptian revolution, where 20 million users were essentially cut off from the global Internet by the Mubarak government. If the Assad regime intentionally took down the internet, it likely did so to make it more difficult for opposition groups to communicate within their organizations and share information about regime actions with the outside world.

While Syrian opposition leaders have relied on the internet for a number of communication needs, the frequency of internet outages and regime surveillance has forced them to build up alternative communications channels — sometimes with technological help from the U.S, which as of last November “provided some 2,000 communications kits, pieces of equipment” to opposition forces since the civil war broke out.

According to security researchers at Umbrella Labs, war torn Syria effectively went offline today:

“At around 18:45 UTC OpenDNS resolvers saw a significant drop in traffic from Syria. On closer inspection it seems Syria has largely disappeared from the Internet.“

Here’s the illustration from Umbrella Labs:

While the cause is unclear, internet outages in Syria have come at tactically significant times for the Assad regime in the past. Last November 92 percent of web traffic went offline as the regime was rumored to be mixing chemical weapon components, and 78 percent of traffic went offline in January when Assad gave a rare public address.

Today’s outage makes it even harder to know what exactly is going on in Syria because much of the outreach and organization by rebel forces relied on the internet, such as Youtube videos.

Sen. Bob Corker said on Tuesday that he believes the United States will soon be arming moderate Syrian rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

“I do think we’ll be arming the opposition shortly,” he said on CBS This Morning, adding that the U.S. is “doing a lot more there on the ground than really is known” but that it’s time to “change the equation”:

HOST NORAH O’DONNELL: Do you think this administration needs to move further in terms of arming the opposition? What’s next?

CORKER: I do think we’ll be arming the opposition shortly. We’re doing a lot more there on the ground than really is known. But we do have to change the equation. I think you all know the moderate opposition groups that we support are not as good at fighting. They’re not as good at delivering humanitarian aid. And we need to change the balance and they need to be reaching out to the Alawite population that supports Assad. I think if we can cause that to happen, Russia will be far more open to some kind of political resolve where Assad is removed. But we’ve got to change the balance there and I do think we’ll be arming the rebels soon.

Watch the clip:

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel confirmed last week that the Obama administration is seriously considering arming the rebels but as the New York Times noted on Tuesday, the White House has been insisting that “it would not be thrown off its cautious approach to Syria.”

Meanwhile, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) introduced legislation on Monday that would provide weapons to vetted opposition fighters.