already said about the deconfliction channel with the russians, a multi-level, robust communication we have deployed for some time. i m not able to give you more information on a particular conversation. what was the second part of the question? the military balance of the civil war. does assad s regime i think the strikes were targeted to send a message and i think they were successful in achieving that military objective. i want to get to someone who hasn t spoken. thank you, dana. follow up on the question of mission accomplished. if the mission is to deter president assad from producing from spreading chemical weapons, is it possible to know whether that mission, as described, was accomplished? last night, operations were successful. we met all of our objectives. we hit all of our targets,
remember, the syrians said they shot down 13. the russian defense ministry said of 103 missiles fired, 71 were intercepted giving the impression they perhaps they simply meant that the syrians somehow saw 71. and looking forward, the interesting thing toward the end, he said the syrian chemical weapons network is larger than the three places. we took out the heart of it, but of course that would suggest that there is still more to come. and he didn t answer the question of where s the red line now is it sarin gas? is it chlorine gas? but he said we are ready for anything. we re ready for more. and the spokeswoman finally saying it was a very clear message last night, and we hope that he meaning president assad heard it. bill neely live for us in beirut lebanon. thanks for that, bill. we want to bring in our pentagon correspondent hans nicoles. good to have you back with us. we heard your question in the
later today at russia s request. going forward, i think the russians have limited leverage with bashar al assad that they cannot deliver bashar al assad on a plate. they don t have that kind of influence. they have some influence this syria, for sure. but they don t control syria, and they don t control or micro manage everything that bashar al assad does. former u.s. ambassador to syria, robert ford, and congressman adrian espana, we appreciate that. that wraps up this hour of msnbc live. in a moment, a.m. joy will pick up on the very latest in the syria strikes. stay with us. david. what s going on? oh hey! that s it? yeah. that s it? everybody two seconds! dear sebastian, after careful consideration of your application,
that this was legitimate and proportionate response. let me begin by asking you about the first two parts of those. justified and legitimate, do you believe the president had the legitimate, legal authorized means from congress to carry out this strike? well, clearly we all reject and condemn the attacks. i think anybody on both sides of the aisle, the whole world is rejecting these horrific attacks. i think there must be some level of response to this. what i think is that an immediate one time response is not sufficient to eliminate assad s ability to hurt his own people. the president must come to congress and the constitution is very clear in this and we must have a lengthy discussion as to how to diplomatically and militarily address this crisis. now, that s very hard to do when the president is cutting the state department, the arm that is supposed to move forward and do this. on the diplomatic front. and so we must have a robust discussion to address this long term and tha
question looming above us which is whether we have eliminated assad s ability to continue to attack the defenseless people of syria with chemical weapons. okay. i think that happens because we have not been engaged in a long-term strategic discussion with congress to really cripple his ability to do that. for example, the civilian protection act goes right at that. it goes after the money. who are the people who are doing business with syria? who is aiding and abetting assad to do this? we must do that in order to both diplomatically and militarily deter the assad regime from doing this again. otherwise, this is a one time attack that will not do much as the previous attack did. here we find ourselves a year later watching this horrendous, horrific chemical attacks on the people of syria. congressman, let me ask you really quickly about something that data white said and she said that we were justified,