senator joe manchin of west virginia, they re debating on the senate floor the pros and cons of u.s. authorization of military strikes into syria. manchin strongly opposed to these strikes. he is in favor of some sort of diplomatic solution. very encouraged by this latest russian proposal. we ll monitor what s happening on the senate floor. despite all the new potential for a diplomatic solution to the syria crisis, president obama still wants the authority to launch a u.s. strike and he was lobbying senators from both parties up on capitol hill earlier in the day, even as he asked for an actual delay in the vote. our chief congressional correspondent dana bash is up on capitol hill right now. what are you hearing, dana, about what happened inside those meetings? reporter: it really indicates how quickly things have changed. the whole reason the president came up here, the reason the
critical area that needed to be backed off. let s move down to this region. if i get rid of all these things, you can see the attacks. rebel area over here. this is the regime over here. what s this? this is a strategic air base, it s probably the most important air base in the damascus area. this is where the regime leaves from if they have to bug out. you get the point. these hay tacks which may have seemed a bit random to us, to those in the know in fact were very close to very important targets. thanks guys. very good explanation. up next in our special reports, we have some special insights into the president s address to the nation. why didn t he just cancel his speech? i ll ask his former speechwriter. i didn t think it was anything. i had pain in my abdomen. it just wouldn t go away. i was spotting, but i had already gone through menopause.
reason we are here and we are getting to negotiate is because of an off-hand comment secretary kerry frankly, i don t believe, ever thought that the russians would respond to. so i think the russians have played an excellent gambit or a game of geopolitical chess with us, but it may be to our benefit to see if we can get a negotiated settlement. i think that does have to include russia. the president in the interview he granted me yesterday, he suggested this was by no means some sort of off-hand comment. he said they had been talking about it for awhile, including last week when he was at the g-20 summit in st. petersburg, russia. listen to the president, what he told me. the fact that the u.s. administration and i have said we are serious about this, i think has prompted some interesting conversations and these are conversations that i ve had directly with mr. putin. when i was at the g-20, we had some time to discuss this, and i
coty keenan took over for me. now he s doing a fantastic job. this is going to be a ten or 12 minute speech, is that right? usually a prime time address runs around 15 minutes. could be as long as 15 minutes? probably. when you say the president gets involved, does he have a little meeting, does he meet with the team and say here s some of the points i want to make and they continue to meet throughout? yeah. there s plenty of meetings throughout the speech. i ve gotten pages and pages of writing from him back the next day. he ll be fine tuning and tweaking it right up until he deliver it is. was there any consideration as far as you know, should there have been consideration given to postponing the speech given the fluidity of the diplomacy right now? i don t think so. you or i know exactly what s going on because we re political geeks and read all the stuff.
ready to come clean and disclose the location of its chemical weapons and stop production, and join the international community in banning chemical weapons. our senior white house correspondent jim acosta begins our coverage this hour. what is the very latest at the white house at this delicate moment? reporter: wolf, administration officials say president obama will be delivering a very different speech than he might have given just 48 hours ago all because of that russian proposal prompted by secretary of state john kerry s comments that just might avoid a military strike against syria, at least for the time being. after a fast-paced 24 hours on syria, administration officials say president obama s big speech to the nation tonight will put diplomacy back on the table. so today, he was up on capitol hill, telling lawmakers what administration officials told cnn, that there is now less pressure for congress to authorize military force against syria. it s important we do this well,