deal is made and then bashar al assad does not comply and continues, by the way, the slaughter of over 100,000, the problem by the way in syria is not chemical weapons although as horrible as they are, the 100,000 that verizon been killed but suppose that he doesn t comply. they go to the u.p.s. let me give you the quote from mr. lavrov. he said, nothing is said about the use of force or sanctions. so they go to the united nations. it s clear they would veto again. it is now in the hands of russia to decide whether bashar al assad is really complying or not. can i ask you then how might we be in the united states in a different position if the goal if the goal was to prevent him from ever using chemical weapons again? i realize your deal is different. work with me. don t use chemical weapons again how might the situation have been different had the president stayed on course and been bombing by now. of course, the president probably wouldn t have been
which they haven t had since 1970. we are now depending on the good will of the russian people if bashar al assad violates this agreement and i am of the firm belief given his record that is a very, very big gamble. senator mccain, thank you very much. as always i appreciate your time. i want to bring in the chairman of the senate foreign relations committee democrat from new jersey, robert menendez and roy blunt will join us in a moment. chairman menendez, you heard senator mccain and you said this past week anything short of punishing assad would be a mistake. well, he s not getting punished. not at the moment. well, david, look, this is a diplomatic breakthrough that is full of opportunity and fraught with danger. the opportunity is that we actually end up in a better place than we envisioned with the use of force which is the elimination of all of assad s chemical weapons and his production facilities, in essence closing down these
middle of next year. why shouldn t that be universally cheered? it is a very big deal, sweeping deal but there are a lot of ifs. is it going to work? the russians say they re speaking for assad. assad has not personally committed to this. he spoke to disclose in a week. what if he doesn t meet that deadline? the only enforcement is up to the u.n. and that s still to be negotiated and russia ruled out the use of force as a threat. that doesn t mean the president couldn t use force but with congress leaning against that with the american people against that, how credible a threat is that? i don t want to get into the weeds on the united nations but when comes to force if somebody plays cat and mouse and wants to gum the works the u.s. is in a position to go to the u.n. and say, hey f. that happens then weath we re going to threaten force and are in a position to use it. that s correct. in fact, tomorrow there s going to be this big report from the u.n. inspectors, not literally tyi
bombing and if it had been an unbelievably small attack, i m not sure secretary kerry said how often difference it would make. no s not scary and unbelievably small attack. the point is if the agreement had said that there will be the use of force automatically or the russians had agreed that they could go under chapter 7 to the united nations security council, that puts an entirely different cast on it. right now it s up to the russians to decide that. and, by the way, they didn t even assign blame for this attack. in fact, putin and his op-ed piece, stirring piece said that it was a rebels, it was the free syrian army that committed this. there is not a seriousness on the part of the russians, and, again, here we are going to see if it works we re going to see the russians facilitating the departure of chemical weapons while planeload after planeload of russian aircraft coming into damascus full of weapons and
devices to kill syrians of which there is over 100,000. whatever happened to the president s red line where he said, if they use these chemical weapons, whether we will respond and okay, but as you know i think the president would say to you, okay, the reality is that red line was to prevent him from using weapons and we have the prospect here even if we don t completely trust the russians of getting to a point where he no longer has weapons. why shouldn t that be seen as victory? it s not a matter of trust. it s a matter of whether it will be enforced or not when the mr. lavrov said there is nothing in this agreement about the use of force. i.e., they will not agree to the use of force no matter what bashar al assad does. two points that i want to try to pin you down on. sure. which is, if the russians stand in the way, if they re gaming the president and the us right now and this is they re in charge. they re in charge so if they stand in the way of any potential