it will start with limited assistance to those in the opposition that it trusts. the president is right, the choices go from bad to worse. those who have no affinity or love loss for the united states of america. the choices ared b bad. if the regime continues to win on the ground, do you have a responsibility to long term the other thing is, even if you never step foot in there, which there is no intention of doing, even if you can do a no fly zone and everything works out, where do those weapons end up? that s always the long-term problem. are you arming the wrong people here and they will turn them against you eventually. let me also just say that ben rhodes said no decision on a military operation, like a no fly zone, has been made. you just spoke with john mccain. that s exactly what he wants. he believes this may be a step in the right direction but clearly believes it is not
we re joined by democrat of maryland, the ranking member of the house intelligence committee. you just heard freder frederik pleitgen s report. it sounds like it s at a critical time for the opposition. what do you make of the decision and do you feel like this is overdue? no. the first thing is, we have to get proof and the proof is and our intelligence community has confirmed that chemical weapons were used. that s a red line. we have to be involved. we have to stop it. we have to do what we can do to help train and assist the rebels. that does not mean that we are putting boots on the ground. that does not mean that we re going to do the things that we ve done in iraq and afghanistan. congressman, are weapons going to be enough? is a no-fly zone in order? well, right now there s a lot of momentum. no question going with the assad re regime. one of the main reasons is hezbollah. they have made a difference so
president obama s red line in syria has been crossed. the intelligence community has concluded that sarin gas was used by the syrian regime and 150 people have died. the president has decided to provide more support to the rebels, including military assistance. let s go to jessica yellin who is at the white house. ben rhodes just wrapped up a conference call with reporters. what did he have to say? reporter: jim, ben rhodes confirmed that the intelligence community has determined that the use of sarin gas has occurred on multiple occasions, has been deployed by the syrian regime and has killed 100 to 150 people. that this is this has crossed the president s red line and this is changing the president s calculus on syria. the president has decided to
and it started off in a coded fashion. he didn t come out and say, we re arming the rebels. he talked about providing military assistance in such a way to make the rebel opposition more effective in their fight against the regime. barbara, what, if anything, can you tell us about what they are talking about? well, jim, what a senior administration official is telling me is that the president has not made that final decision yet about what option he wants to go for. there s some things that i think reasonably are going to be taken off the table. no u.s. ground troops in syria. the president also not anxious, not really looking at putting a no fly zone into place, though senator john mccain wants that. the most likely option, potentially arming the rebels. let s remember that this is something that mccain himself has been pushing for for quite a bit. listen to what he had to say a short time ago. i applaud the president s decision. i applaud the fact that he has
he made some comments apparently up in new york. essentially agreeing with john mccain that more needed to be done. those comments were made when there was a decision made by the white house today. you were heavily involved in what happened in bosnia. some say that may be a template for what happened in syria. is that realistic? what do you think could be done? is arming the rebels going to be enough? well, every situation is different. we have to learn from every one of them. in this case, arming the rebels with rpgs is not going to be significant. we re starting to move towards a full-scale proxy war with iran here. iran s engaged. they ve got people in there. hezbollah s fighting hard and bashar al assad regime is willing to use chemical weapons. they simply don t want to lose. so i think if the administration