now assad was really winning. and coming out in terms of having a real advantage. and we could not let that happen. russia is now the real equation. what will the president say at this g-8 summit to vladimir putin that will at all push him off of his position of wanting to keep assad in place? >> andrea, this is probably too simple a question to be answerable, i guess, but i mean, talk about the united states getting pressure from allies like england and france on this. but them not going ahead without us. i mean, in some ways in libya, france did go ahead without us and did some things that the united states was not willing to do ourselves. they did not really do that in syria. they have not been arming the rebels. and now we are. and we presumably will take part in some multilateral effort to do that with a lot of european partners. what difference does it make that we're doing it? why couldn't the people who were