U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spent nearly three hours on Wednesday parrying questions from Senate Democrats on the U.S. military incursion in Venezuela and the lack of congressional authorization or even consultation going into the early January operation to seize President Nicolás Maduro.

Most Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee heaped praise on their former committee colleague for his leading role in the administration’s Venezuela policy. However, two Republican senators joined Democrats in voicing concerns, including about the international implications of the administration’s legal justifications for toppling the Maduro government.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spent nearly three hours on Wednesday parrying questions from Senate Democrats on the U.S. military incursion in Venezuela and the lack of congressional authorization or even consultation going into the early January operation to seize President Nicolás Maduro.

Most Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee heaped praise on their former committee colleague for his leading role in the administration’s Venezuela policy. However, two Republican senators joined Democrats in voicing concerns, including about the international implications of the administration’s legal justifications for toppling the Maduro government.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul, who has long criticized both Democratic and Republican administrations for their increasingly expansive interpretations of executive war powers, noted that defenders of the Maduro operation and the U.S. military strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific assert that those actions “are not really wars” but rather are “kinetic actions or drug busts.”

Indeed, Rubio himself made that case during the hearing, telling Paul, “We just don’t believe that this operation [to capture Maduro] comes anywhere close to the constitutional definition of war.”

Paul turned that logic on its head, arguing that the United States would never accept it if another government took such action against America but insisted it was only a law enforcement operation.

“But would it be an act of war if someone did it to us? Nobody dies, few casualties, they’re in and out, boom. It’s a perfect military operation,” Paul asked Rubio. “Of course it would be an act of war. I’m probably the most anti-war person in the Senate, and I would vote to declare war if someone invaded our country and took our president. So I think we need to at least acknowledge this is a one-way argument. One-way arguments that don’t rebound, that you can’t apply to yourselves, that cannot be universally applicable, are bad arguments.”

Rubio said he didn’t see any equivalency to the theoretical action a hostile country might take against the United States in the scenario described by Paul, adding, “We’re always going to do what’s best for the United States of America.”

Paul said he was worried about the international example the Trump administration was making and warned it could rebound against not only the United States but also U.S. allies such as Israel, whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is under indictment by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza. The White House has justified its capture of Maduro on the grounds that the Venezuelan authoritarian was under U.S. federal indictment on drug trafficking charges.

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine joined Paul in getting some pointed comments in about the lack of public transparency and legal justifications the administration has claimed for insisting its monthslong campaign of deadly boat strikes is legally permissible despite not being authorized by Congress.

“Finally, a public hearing! Wow, how novel!” Kaine said, noting that it had been nearly five months since the administration began the campaign. “We’ve had 200 folks, who are on secret designated combatant lists, [who] have been killed. U.S. troops have been injured. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent” on amassing a regional armada.

(Some 126 people have been killed in the U.S. strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, according to the U.S. military. Another estimated 75 to 100 Venezuelans and Cubans are believed to have been killed during the capture of Maduro, according to Democratic Sen. Chris Coons.)

“But even that hearing is constrained. I’d like to talk about the complete weakness of the legal rationale about the strikes on boats in international waters, but I can’t because the administration has only shared it with members in a classified setting,” Kaine said. “I can’t share with you the grim details of the murder of shipwrecked survivors in open waters—that we all know because we’ve seen the videos and we’ve questioned the U.S. military officials involved about legality—because the administration will not release that publicly.”

Kaine urged his colleagues who have not yet done so to request a classified briefing on the targeting criteria the U.S. military has been using to strike the boats. “Ask this question: What was the evidence that there were narcotics on that craft? You will be very surprised if you ask that question about every strike,” he said.

Republican Sen. John Curtis offered some mild criticism of the State Department under Rubio’s management as well—but only after he first layered on thick praise.

“I’ve only had the luxury of watching you from a distance, but I will tell you, unequivocally, I’m grateful for your role. I believe unequivocally that you and President Trump have made the world a safer place,” said Curtis, who holds Rubio’s former Foreign Relations portfolio as the top Republican on the Western Hemisphere subcommittee. “I do have a basic concern. … I’m often struggling to get briefings, clear information, or meaningful cooperation from the administration and the State Department.”

Curtis cited the State Department’s rejection of a request he and Kaine had made late last year to provide department witnesses for a subcommittee hearing on Venezuela and their ongoing struggle to secure department participation in a hearing on the administration’s “prioritization of the Western Hemisphere.” It wasn’t until Kaine recently forced the issue by bringing a Venezuela war powers resolution up for a Senate vote that the department finally agreed to a committee briefing on its counter-drug operations.

“I couldn’t get a briefing on the drug operations until the Kaine war power resolution, and then all of a sudden, we got a briefing, but I didn’t get that because I was the chair of the Western Hemisphere [subcommittee],” Curtis said. “I would ask you, if you were the chair of the Western Hemisphere, would you be OK with that … with a reaction like that from the State Department?”

Rubio justified the lack of department engagement on committee requests for information about Venezuela and drug boat operations by saying those issues were being handled by the Defense and Justice departments, which the Senate Foreign Relations Committee does not have lead oversight over.

Senators’ concerns extended beyond Venezuela, though: Rubio also evaded multiple Democratic attempts to pin him down on what plans the administration might have for attempting to topple the Cuban government.

“I think we would love to see the regime change—that doesn’t mean that we’re going to make a change,” said Rubio, who is Cuban American and a longtime hawk when it comes to opposing the Communist government in Havana. “There’s no doubt about the fact it would be a great benefit to the United States if Cuba was no longer governed by an autocratic regime.” Rubio noted that under U.S. law, it has long been official policy to support regime change in Cuba via a trade embargo on the Caribbean island nation.