of the activists also rounded on the president trump has boosted the anti-abortion cause by appointing conservative judges to the supreme court s hands to federal courts so that our message to your president jacques. was was. because we had enough of you. c now you want bodies like your making decisions partisan about it. was the us is facing long and polarizing call room battles over the right to abortion. and it s another divisive issue as the country moves towards next year s presidential election. the united states has said the syrian government may still be using chemical weapons most recently in an alleged chlorine attack at the weekend government forces have been hauling parts of
and would you consider a small-scale chlorine attack sufficient to launch additional strikes? right now i ll just tell you we re in close consultation with our allies. we review all the evidence all the time. it is difficult, as you know, to get evidence out of syria. but right now we have no additional attacks planned. as far as the legal authority under the article ii of the constitution, we believe the president has every reason to defend vital american interests. what were some of the targeting considerations or difficulties involved in going after chemical facilities? how long did the operation take the plan? and last year s strikes were described as proportional, moderate. how would you describe this year s in contrast to that? we chose these particular
and let s be clear here. but bashar al as sad. there is little doubt that he is responsible. he has the resources. he has done this many times before and two, this is not just a chlorine attack but also involved some nerve agent. one handicap the united states has is they don t have boots on the ground to capture the evidence themselves. it is not about who did it and what they used. it is about how hard the evidence is that you have to
nation s national security and he ll have a high bar to meet. let s talk about syria. there s breaking news and that is french president macron says he has proof positive that the chemical attack, the chlorine attack, was launched by assad on his own people. what do you want to see the u.s. response be? what i ve wanted to see the united states do for some time, what i ve been advocating is that the administration needs a strategy to syria. if we want to defeat isis and end the civil war and end the humanitarian disaster that syria has become then you have to have a comprehensive strategy. the president once before fired missiles at assad for using chemical weapons. it didn t ultimately end the use of chemical weapons as we have now seen, so a military strike is only one element of what is more important. we need to get a coalition of the willing to ultimately isolate not only assad but the
has significant, still, chlorine at his dissupposal that can be weaponized. an industrial agent. weaponizing it is against international law. it has all the signs of what would be a chlorine attack. when macron said that, he said we have evidence of at least chlorine. the frothing at the mouth, red eyes, respiratory problems that some of the survivors had, all of that indicates from a circumstantial look at it as evidence of chlorine. how far is the state department in going in saying there is 100% proof that assad was responsible for this poison gas attack and potentially that the russians knew about it? we re not going to hear them go that far at this point. they sounded close to that the last time we heard them talk about it. they said they have evidence that this is the syrian regime. they stated that pretty definitively. they didn t leave a whole lot of room in there for it to be anything different. what do you think, phil? you used to work at the cia. a lot of people are sk