think this hurts assad. his survivability rate just went down. of course it does. the russians the russian involvement in this, they haven t stopped. again, i say this. they have been in syria, assad killing his own people. which got everyone obviously upset about this is the 20 kids, babies, that were killed. bill: yeah, the gas. i get it. but he s been doing this for 5-6 years. i don t see any reason that they gave him gas. putin would say, don t do that. bill: do you think putin would okay a gas attack, mr. harmer? i think it s a dispute that the russians weren t aware that syria was resuming its chemical weapons capacity. i don t think the russians suggested this for there s a big difference between assad being dependent on russian help, which he is, and assad functioning as a mercenary for the russians, which is a stretch.
bill: you don t love assad, you want to be on this planet, you better not do it again because it s not going to be pleasant. iran, we haven t heard much from them. usually, they ve got a lot of people in syria doing bad things. can you tell us anything about their reaction? yes. i think is very interesting in the past eight years, they have been very, very loud, they have been very offensive in their comments even after events such as the hostage taking of our naval personnel and other, other very dangerous things that they have done. i think their silence is a very positive sign because as the sponsor of the regime in damascus, they have to draw conclusions as well. this is about messages that are sent to nations like russia, china, and iran. bill: let s take russia. if putin condemns the act andd sends a warship into the mediterranean, saber rattling a little bit.
has a very narrow definition of success right now and that staying alive. there is no fallback option. those under to bill: you mentioned this last night. it russia. is russia stupid enough to get involved with poison gas? bad drones, as you talk about with catherine. i don t think i don t think, i know. assad is not doing anything without russian approval and russian involvement. this country was gone and lost until the russians showed up. assad is absolutely dependent on bill: if you were putin and you knew the world is horrified at poison gas killing 20 children. why would you i mean, why? i m not sure, bill. look. why would a former kgb lieutenant colonel say okay to use sarin gas? bill: this kind of attention to syria because i
um, i think it was a very effective attack. i think it was smart to uses with cruise missiles. there are still russians at the base to attest the accuracies of the weapon systems. i do not think it will guarantee it won t be used again. i think there is a very limited message being sent to assad, a very powerful message, overwhelming force. it was as our friend already said, a narrow message well delivered. but no. i don t see this guaranteeing. i think assad will trot this out again. and if we got the russians involved bill: why would he do that though? if you trotted out again, that doesn t make any sense to me. he knows that trump is going to up it, because trump is not going to say, okay, i m not going to do anything after you spit in my eye after i give you a warning. the next time instead of it
is there any serious, serious reaction tonight? i wouldn t say serious reaction, but i would say the leading edge of this investigation right now is into whether russia had some kind of role, bill, in this chemical attack earlier this week, and whether a second strike on that town in syria was really an effort to destroy evidence and be part of a larger cover-up of that crime. and that is really where military intelligence is focused tonight. bill: they had a drone, i understand! correct. bill: russian drone over the area where the chemicals dropped and killed children. and a russian bomber bombed the hospital where civilians were taken. is that what we are talking about tonight? that s right. there was a drone immediately over the site where the sarin gas was released. and then about 4-5 hours later when the victims have been taken to the hospital, another drone showed up. shortly after that, there was a military strike on that hospital. the people i m talking to tonight say