0 news conference at the g-20 in rusch announ russia announcing he will speak to the american people on tuesday. hello, everybody. i'm craig melvin. the president spent his last day at the summit engaging with other world leaders and, once again, making his case for a strike on syria. failing to respond to this breach of this international norm would send a signal to rogue nations, authoritarian they can use weapons of mass destruction and not pay a consequence. >> the president' new comments coming as security threats provert the state department to issue warnings in lebanon and turkey. the same that i "the new york times" is reporting that president obama has directed the pentagon to sxanexpand its list potential targets in syria, targets that could -- secretary of state john kerry talked about this in an exclusive interview with chris hayes. >> i know the lessons of war. i don't believe this is taking america to war. i believe this is enforcing a very limited military action, not going to war, that will, in fact, stand up for the notion that you should not use chemical weapons. >> and 96 hours, that is how long our nbc news first team says president obama has to turn things around on capitol hill, where support for authorization appears to be crumbling. >> i worry that a strike makes the situation on the ground worse in syria, not better. it's a chaotic situation to begin with but if assad responds with more ferocious strikes against his own people or our allies in the region hard to understand how that makes the situation better. >> all of this unfolding as a jittery american public worries about a strike combined with raising battles on the hill nen a rocky economy. new jobs numbers showing unemployment fallen and 169,000 jobs added in august. nbc news political director and host of "the daily rundown" chuck todd joins me live now from st. petersburg, russia is joining me now. do we know any more about that conversation that he had with russian president vladimir putin? >> reporter: we just know a little bit what he said and the putin side of things where he said they mostly discussed syria. interesting in the press conference, the president seems to think he has a chance of changing putin's mind at least on who is behind the chemical weapons attack after the united nations comes up with their investigation. it seems clear the president, i had heard this behind the scenes, one of the points he has pushed with putin, with president putin is saying, okay if you think the united nations is only place you can go to discuss syria, you should believe whatever the united nations comes up with in its investigation then is the fact and the truth and they are pretty confident when they see the investigation is done, that it will also help bolster their case that this was the assad regime and not from the rebel side of things as putin has intimated there. the president on tuesday will try to make the case for the limited military strike. the fact that is coming together, the confluence of those events is only going to make his remarks probably more pointed, harder, makes it a harder case perhaps to convince because it does bring back all of those memories for the american public about afghanistan, about iraq, all of the war weariness. so it provides that backdrop i think it was interesting to hear the tone the president struck and i think you'll hear a similar tone on tuesday night, trying to say, i get it, i hear you, i understand why there is so much skepticism. he is not disputing any of that. he pointed to a little bit of politics but when i pushed him on that, oh, you really think it's politics and then he backed off. i do find it's interesting that the one -- the most -- probably the most clearest answer he gave mission creep and target list are somehow expanding and he said it so many times about this narrow military operation that you got to think that now that that is their hope they will start pulling back on whatever plans apparently, at least military officials, thought were ordered. >> i found it interesting what he said about -- what the president say about going ahead with the strike if congress does not authorize. again, earlier today, we heard from an adviser who said that would not happen, that he would not go ahead with that, but we didn't hear that from the president today. >> reporter: no. and i've heard from similar advisers who said they can't imagine a scenario where the president would go ahead, if congress rejected him, that the president would do this. unless somehow assad did something new, unless there was a new reason to go forward. but i did have somebody explain to me, i said why isn't the president said one way or another and they believe that if -- the thing the president could decide to go on his own. remember, none of his advisers thought he was even remotely going to congress for authorization up until he held a the final classified briefing takes place at 5:00 p.m. on monday. i'll tell you why. you know, we just heard chuck todd talking about war weariness in the united states. a terrific representative from maryland, chris van hollen occurred to it as the overhang of iraq. i say to you, i think it's more than those things. it's anger. people are angry in this country, because we didn't just go to war. we didn't just suffer casualties. we didn't just see kids coming home with missing limbs and post traumatic stress order. we went through all of that because we were lied to. we were drawn into iraq because of an administration that lied to us. >> congressman, to those who would say that syria is different from iraq, and syria is different from afghanistan, your response to that would be what? >> i am going to hear out the administration. i'm coming to you live from pittston, pennsylvania. this is the home of t.j. who in may of 2007 was a lieutenant in the army. he took a bullet across his face. it went through his eyes. he lost his eyesight. he suffered post-traumatic stress disorder. he is putting his life back together and everybody knows him here in pittston. he is an admirable young man. he just had his 30th birth. he is doing 5k races with his father. we admire this man but when we see him we get angry when we were lied to and drawn into that war for no good reason. of course, this is all together different. we have a president who is reluctant warrior and proposing limited missile strikes so i intend to hear out the administration. >> let's say hypothetically, congress decides to refuse to grant the president this power. and the president decides to act any way. what then? >> i doubt he would to that. you have to understand, i have an enormous goodwill for our president. i think he means to do the right thing. he will do the right thing. i don't see tho consistent with what you're suggesting that he take it to congress, congress gives it the thumb's down, and then he did it any way. i don't see that happening. >> congressman matt cartwright, thank you. appreciate your time. i want to go live to beirut, lebanon. threats have issued the nonessential staff to leave the president obama talking about moments ago, secretary kerry says there could be roughly a hundred,000 rebels in syria. in the simplest of terms here, what are the different groups and which one of these groups or not one of these groups, but which of these groups are tied to al qaeda, and do with we know? >> we do. the groups are more identifiable as specific units with specific ide ideoologie ideoologies. you have to make a distinctions between the political opposition that the u.s. and international community is engaged with. we are speaking about the rebels on the ground. there are a handful of groups affiliated with al qaeda and that is an ideological sense. they adopt an ideological of al qaeda and other jihadist groups that want a islamic state across the region. these are the groups i think the u.s. are worried about. these are the ones that really appearing to be more potent on the fighting field and major security concern going forward for syria and for the region. i think they are the ones that are of the biggest concern right now. >> thank you, sir. that leads us to today's big question. has president obama made the case that a strike on syria is in america's best interest? you can head to thomas's facebook page to weigh in or tweet us your answer. meanwhile, unemployment is at its lowest in five years but could potential u.s. engagement in syria knock a fragile economy back off course? 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