Ask congress to debate this in a serious way. because i do think it raises issues that will occur for us and for the international community for many years to come. the truth of the matter is under international law, a security council resolution for self-defense or telephones an ally provides a clear basis for action. but increasingly we ll be confronted with situations like syria and kosovo and rwanda in which we may not always have a security council that can act, it may be paralyzed for a whole host of reasons. yet we have all these international norms that we are interested in upholding. we may not be directly imminently threatened i what s
i think there are a lot of fears of escalation and that it could reload to greater retaliation. i also think there is a big fear that any action that we do really needs to target the air power in order to limit that ability to retaliate. that being said, the opposition is have much in favor of a more robust strike to help them an empower them. but any reaction at this point is better than nothing. martha: there is also reports that the syrian defense minister under assad has defected to turkey. can you confirm those reports and how significant is that? would that be a sign his support is starting to principler and would that be a hopeful sign? it is a hopeful sign. he did defect with a number of senior commanders and important generals from the syrian army.
Massachusetts you can file a lawsuit anonymously. it s very hard to understand, but again it s this march of operation against church and state. when you ask people to show the founding documents where that is, it s not in a declaration, it s not in a constitution. it s just people that believe they should separate any type of faith, any type of belief from the united states of america when they played an more than part in the early writings of the founding fathers. what thomas jefferson, when he wrote the letter to the convention, saying we should not have a head of state who is also the head of church, that s what he meant. that s why we created the first amendment that says you have the free exercise of religion, we don t have state sponsored religion here, so i don t understand what this couple s gripe is about. and i think it s much ado about nothing. the massachusetts supreme court will hear the case tomorrow. one quick question. when do you think there could be a strike in s
Weapons, possibly falling in the hands of al qaeda. they don t seem willing to talk about whether they re prepared to prevent that from happening. many politicians are getting calls from their con does it u enthes saying don t do it. many feel this is the right thing to do. it may hurt some of them. whether you agree with them or not. what do you do when your constituents say, no, don t do that. in the end, i m going to do what i think is in the best interest of america. you don t ignore what your constituents are telling you. they do letter you to represent their interests. this really has an effect. in terms of what s going to happen in the next couple days. when would you anticipate that there would be a vote? the vote in congress won t occur until next week. in the foreign relations committee, i m afraid they re going to put this resolution to a vote tomorrow. i hope they don t. i have an awful lot of questions that will only just begin to get answered tomorrow morning duri
Of the president s mission in syria, and now there is some indication, and this is a reuters report that we are working to confirm. we called to the senator s office to see if he s on board. but they are reporting he s not onboard with a strike resolution. i m joined by a research analyst at the institute for the study of war. she has spent a lot of time meeting with the opposition forces. she just returned from a trip there. that was her fifth in the past year. she is with us now from washington. good to have you here today. what are your thoughts on that? i know that you have had a lot of communication with senator john mccain. would you be surprised if he was not supportive this senate draft resolution? i think all along senator mccain advocated for a