comments from their phone calls from their constituents, and i m picking that up as i go around my state. so there s not the american people are very dubious about a deeper involvement in the middle east. so if that is done, a clear, articulated reason for it and justification needs to be made. reporter: that is why john mccain is calling for an oval office address. you ll recall the president made the case in the rose garden on a saturday afternoon of labor day weekend, and so supporters of taking action in syria are saying it would help if he did more. martha? martha: well, it sounds like he may. and what have we heard, mike, from those who support the measure? reporter: i should note that the senate intelligence committee is going into a closed session now to try to make the case to lawmakers, showing them some of the classified information. some will back this measure to, essentially, have the president s back. others who are national security types are saying they believe
controlling this area down sear the southern border of jordan and one area of damascus. northern fighters, and up around the northern border of turkey. these are the three areas that are watched now as the fighting goes back and forth. if there is a strike look for the central part of the country to take the brunt of that, damascus up to homs, which would appear many of the targets would be on behalf of the regime. we re watching all this. a couple weeks ago people thought you go in and hit them with a strike and the airport and airstrip and go home or you go after the chemical weapons. how do you do that and where have they moved now. all this is being factored what could or might happen in syria. martha: others believe with each passing day the dynamic changes on the ground in terms of who are the strongest among the rebel groups. very complicated to understand all of these groups because the pentagon estimates because there are as many as 1200 different groups.
did duncan have a point? i understand his concerns. it is certainly the case we haven t gotten all the answers from the state department and obama minute more broadly on the question of what happened in benghazi. that said, we re debathe the possibility of going to war in syria. if it were me i would have spent my time asking questions about what the administration s plans are in syria because there are many questions in front of us about what they actually plan to do and what difference it will make. bill: that s a good point. are you saying duncan was out of line with his question on benghazi? he can choose to ask whatever questions he wants. he is the congressman. he ran. he is representing his constituents, presumably they have an interest in these matters. i m just saying that i have, i think there are enough unanswered questions about what lays in front of us on syria, in particular, that i would have used my time to ask those questions and really press secretary kerry to res
which is right in st. petersburg, russia, so even the location is a very tense spot in this terms in what we re going through right now, because putin has, of course, sent missile defense technology to the assad regime in the past, and just a day before president obama s arrival, the russian leader was suggesting a military strike without u.n. approval which, of course, we won t get because of russia is something that he, quote, has plans to deal with, whatever that means. kt mcfarland and ralph peters, good to have both of you with us today. kt, let me start with you. how do you think this is going to go when vladimir putin and president obama have a little more time together than just the handshake we just saw. i think putin s been dancing around obama for the last five years, he s going to continue to do so. the conversation that president obama should have with him, though, is say, look, let s not talk about syria, missile shields, let s talk about
what these specific military strikes will do and how they will lead to the improvement in the situation. bill: the next big wrinkle on the story will be an address most likely from the oval office to the american people. you look at some of these polls. off% oppose any sort of strike against damascus. right. bill: that has to be the next sell. i will give you the last word. i mean it s a difficult, it is a very difficult sell for the president because he hasn t been making a sustain case. not just as if the syria problem rose two weeks ago when the president started talking about it. this is something unfolding for two years. we re talking about 100,000 dead syrians maybe more. two million refugees. this has been a problem that has been going on for a long time and the president really has inbeen, hasn t been active on it. bill: listen, we talked a lot about duncan and how the right is reto this but there is big reaction on the left as well. we ll see whether or not the split can b