briefing to members of congress is getting started. officially congress isn t back in washington until september 9th, but the senate foreign relations committee will hold a hearing on tuesday and we ve already heard a lot of reaction to the president s announcement from washington and around the world. we start our coverage in damascus, syria, with bill neely, i itm, in damascus. what has been the response to president obama not striking before getting u.s. congressional approval? reporter: the first reaction from here came, i d say, about two minutes after he finished speaking at the white house, when syria s army began shelling rebel held districts in damascus after day of calm. after that came the mocking-in newspaper headlines one saying the american retreat starts here. the ministers and diplomats weighed in, the ambassador to
the united nations saying obama and cameron had climbed the tree but didn t know how to get down. the deputy prime minister saying obama s delay was laughable. today, i spoke to another one of assad s men, the deputy minister said he wasn t surprised by obama s administration and said obama and the administration are lost and don t know what they will do. he said he hopes the wise people in congress would do what the mps and house commons did and vote against military action. if it came, syria s army was ready, absolutely. bill, thanks so much from damascus. we ll check back with you later on. meanwhile the weapons inspectors are briefing the u.n. and ban ki-moon is asking to hold off on military action. so far no call for military
syrians for those attacks, so many people including some analysts here are saying they don t expect any retaliation, but of course, on the streets, that s not what you hear people are saying, we will be defiant, we will strike back and we know that syria has allies in iran. in hezbollah. that are quite capable of doing something like that. one interesting point, wolf, we ve had silence from president assad for the last couple of days, but i did see today an iranian delegation, which is said to include their security chief, as well as their ambassador to syria, that said they had just met president assad. why were they meeting president assad? we don t know and certainly, they weren t telling us. bill, i want you to stand by in damascus. bill is one of the few western journalists in the syrian capital right now. we re going to touch base with him throughout our special live coverage here on cnn. be careful over there, bill, we ll be joining you shortly.
we ll take you there live. first, any minute now, the secretary of state john kerry will be making a statement on syria. all over this. the alleged use of chemical weapons, nerve gas, used on civilians, women and children. it s the latest in a string of alleged chemical weapons attacks across syria. right now u.n. weapons inspectors, they are inside syria. they are testing soil. earlier today they were fired upon by snipers as they tried to collect samples. for the first time the u.s. now says it has little doubt the assad regime has done the unthinkable. fred pleitgen is standing by in damascus. from the state department, elyse lavin is standing by. let me start with you. the pentagon has moved four warships into the eastern mediterranean right now, not far from the coast of syria. what do folks there at the state department expect to hear from the secretary of state? well, wolf, i think very
intervention saying syria will fight back but they haven t said how exactly they would do that, john. fred pleitgen in damascus. i want to bring in richard haase, the president on foreign relations. based on the tone of secretary kerry s statement which he made just an hour ago, which was a tone we frankly have not heard before, is it safe to say it would be shocking if the dust not take some form of military action? secretary kerry went far out on a limb, both in the content and as you say, john, the tone. so, sure, i would frankly be surprised and then some if the united states now did not probably together with a few other countries take some military action. what kind of action would you advise? you have written that a cruise missile attack would be the way to go. something that did not put