ko consequences in the entire region? i think that s why a lot of people have a real difficult time wrapping their arms around it regardless of the absolutely inhumane treatment that bashar al assad is doing to his own people. patrick, the president i don t think it s it s worth mentioning, right, that the president is in a difficult position on this and that he s not in an enviable position. nonetheless, he is forced to sort of explain the case in two completely different fashions, two different audiences. you had a resolution coming out of the senate foreign relations committee that john mccain had a hand in drafting that was much more aggressive in terms of what it wanted, the deliverables out of u.s. military intervention in syria at the same time that the secretary of state is saying this is going to be unbelievably small. that gave rise to a host of criticism over the nature of this intervention and from military folks, including robert scales, who wrote, service members ar
he s not mocked and ridiculed. come on, this is amateurism. this is amateur hour. i disagree. to a degree i ve never seen. joe hold on, first got to get jeremy. we haven t got jeremy in here. what are they saying on capitol hill? you re the guy closest to that as far as the vote count goes. we re hearing all anecdotally it s looking bad for the president. i think first of all these early vote counts, whip counts you re seeing out there, i don t know how useful they are this far out. i mean you have to remember, a lot of members of congress are not even in washington, haven t been here since the end of july. so i think when they all come back how do you get that job? that s a good job. yeah. no, it s true. they ve been gone five weeks. so when they get back and they start receiving all of these classified briefings, i think that starts to change the calculus a little bit. that said, you know, i do think that you re going to have a
with the amateurism of the obama administration s attempts to craft a plan that makes strategic sense. is there a response from the pentagon? i can tell you this. i spoke with a source who is deployed in that region. and he told me, point plank, we all thought this was going to happen last weekend. he said we were standing extra watches and the readiness level. everything was pointing to the fact that this was about to happen and then all of sudden, he said the tempo went from so it was a shock i think to a lot of those who are deployed. i m not getting the sense of embarrassment from pentagon officials. i think they have continued to sort of refine a lot of these options. obviously they have told us that there has been a lot of movement on the ground over the last week with the syrian forces. that the target list has had to be updated. they have changed targets, adjusted targets.
home, as you just heard, don t do this. as you say, i don t hear a lot of people questioning the intelligence, although certainly recent history would suggest that the intelligence should never be taken at face value, especially when all the details are not made at least as public as possible. but the questions are about how this nation is being led into this conflict and what happens next. i want to read to you from a rather devastating piece in the washington post today from retired manager general scales who said many people planning this and i can share the sentiments inside the pentagon and else where that write the plans and develop strategies for fighting our wars. they re embarrassed to be associated with the amateurism of the obama administration plans to craft a plan that makes strategic sense. they re outraged by the fact that what may happen is an act
thinks the military thinks. he writes i can justifiably share the sentiments of these inside the pentagon and else somewhere who write the plans for fighting our wars. they are embarrassed to be associated with the amateurism of the obama administration s attempt to make plan that makes strategic sense. he points out that chairman dempsey s testimony this week was evidence that he didn t want to support it. the answer is yes. and this authorization will support those activities in addition to responding to the weapons of mass destruction? i don t know how the resolution will evolve but i support