flak jackets and mres. i have been told as i mentioned on the floor that there would be military assistance. they need a lot more than military assistance. we need to establish the no-fly zone. we need a safe zone within syria. every time we have escalated our bid, the russians and hezbollah are all in. you have to change the equation on the ground and you can t do it with half measures. you can t do it with just supplying weapons. assad is far too successful for that to be effect of now. i know you re advocating a no-fly zone. we heard from senator saxby chambliss who said he wouldn t want to go that far. why do you think that s a good idea? and also if you can speak to the fact that obviously a lot of americans and certainly this administration is war weary and is fearful of getting involved to such a agree in another, i
authorities have linked him to at least 11 killings in california, one in alabama, and possibly one in chicago. there may be more. according to watts, martinez is still talking. now, police say they believe martinez finally came clean because he knew they had him this time, and he wanted to get it off his conscience. jim? john, interesting story. thank you. let s turn back to the world stage as voters in iran get ready to elect a new president. cnn s erin burnett has been allowed inside the country. at the top of the hour, she s going out front obviously syria is the big news today. what do you have tonight? is. well, you know, jim, it s actually amazing. we were looking at the campaign posters, and one says the hezbollah, and council for
now acknowledged what the french and others and the rest of us knew, that bashar al assad is using chemical weapons. mccain wants to see the next step of arming the rebels. what could that mean? the u.s. either supplying directly or going to some third-party supplier in eastern europe, desperately needed, mortars, rockets, machine guns. it gets into very dicey territory very quickly. are you going to give the rebels shoulder fire anti-tank weapons, anti-air weapons? because the concern always remains with syria, so unsettled. could that kind of weaponry get into the hands of al qaeda there or into the hands of other militant operating around syria? they ve been reluctant to do that because of that but this is now the step they may take. talking about the fact that the white house, the obama administration may be working through allies, ben rhodes
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