secretary general ban. to all those here in new york and around the world who help to sustain the united nations and cooperative effort of the whole world. cheers. salute. nice gesture by the president of the united states, saluting the secretary general of the u.n. whether one of those meetings will include some sort of encounter with the iranian president. we ll watch. we ll wait to see if that, in fact, happens. the president also addressed the syrian crisis earlier today in his general assembly speech here at the u.n. he called out the security council and its reluctance to act on chemical weapons. syrian government took a first step of giving an
resolved commander in chief. we haven t really seen him in that role of commander-in-chief. he need to do talk about not pin pricks or was the attack going to be bigger than a bread box. that whole conversation confounded me. this is a surgical strike to degrade their capability to deliver chemical weapons. i don t know why we ve been arguing about that, nor should we be talk being what ship, what missile. we shouldn t talk about any of those kind of things. why that s important, steve, is he needed to set the table to say that, listen, peace through strength. if you don t negotiate this right, if we don t get a negotiated settlement, something really bad is going to happen. that s how you get to good diplomatic solutions and all of that, to me, was lost in what i thought was even a bit more confusing of a speech. i was really disappointed in that. i think our national security interests are at stake. steve: i can imagine how your head must be spinning. you must be a little dizzy.
healthy. and good. weight watchers. join for free. because we understand. because we ve been there. because it works. hurry, join by september 14th and you ll get a free month. gretchen: good morning to you today. it is wednesday, september 11, 2013. i m gretchen carlson. president obama laying out a case for a strike against syria last night burks in the same speech, he also asked congress to postpone the vote. if we fail to act, the assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons. i therefore asked the leaders of congress to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force while we pursue this diplomatic path. gretchen: so is the president sending mixed messages to the world? brian: one year to the day, four americans lost their lives, another explosion rocks
chemical weapons are so diabolical and so deadly and why in his estimation, there is a red line and the world feels that, that when you cross that, you re in really big trouble. but then he talked a little bit about congress and, you know, i asked them to go ahead and vote on it, even though no national security interests were at stake there. then he said, i postponed it because now we re looking into this john kerry gaffe deal which could provide the lifeline. what s interesting, though, is while he talks about how the red line has been crossed, now with this russian proposal, what they re suggesting is once they gather up all of the diabolical chemical weapons, they would let mr. assad stay in office. brian: the russians will be on the ground there. steve: it seems like such a disconnect. gretchen: what is the ultimate goal? i think that s what people have been searching for with this administration. what s the goal with your foreign policy? steve: they don t have a strategy.
phone. don t vote. yeah. again, i thought it was odd to have the speech to spend so much time about talking about why he s asking congress not to vote. i didn t understand any of that. my argument was he should have come out, acted as commander in chief and said listen, we have a moral obligation to act on chemical weapons. we have three different conventions on chemical weapons where the world says you can t allow this to happen because they are so god awful. that s important. oh, by the way, we have the capability to do surgical strikes to degrade their ability to deliver chemical weapons. all of that s in our interest and the world s interest. remember, this is a dangerous neighborhood. iran is spending a lot of time there and this is the same country, iran, that tried to blow up a restaurant in washington, d.c. steve: that s right. he really didn t bring in all of the other global issues that are happening in syria and al-qaeda, by the way, 12 years after 9-11, is pooling up