president for action against gadhafi. richard haass, who has been skeptical about this intervention from the start. from washington we re joined by the new york times reporter, robert worth who wrote today s cover story on libya. and from berkeley, california, bob baer, spent years in the middle east and africa. welcome all. you found yourself in you were in egypt. you heard about what was going on in libya and went to libya and chartered a plane and met the opposition and then ended up to take them to see sarkozy. at that meeting with you, the libyan opposition leaders and sarkozy, what happened that convinced france to take such a strong position? i think that sarkozy was convinced before, a few days before when i called him from benghazi, when i made him when i extended to him the
and we are back with bernard henri levy and bob baer and robert worth and richard haass. richard haass mentioned the problem is libya is taking up so much air time we re not talking enough or thinking enough about egypt, saudi arabia, bahrain. you re all experts on so many of these countries. robert worth, your last new york times cover story was about yemen. they are going through a fascinating problem where the president seems to have decided that he can t hold on to power but his family is holding out for the best possible deal maker yet. are we in a stage where we re discussing how many bank accounts can be kept? is the president of yemen on the way out and is that going to produce stability or instability in yemen? again, in yemen it s difficult to tell. i m told there was a deal in principle for assad and the main
region, that would be an enormous net plus for america foreign policy. bob baer, when you see reports about the libyan opposition, importing generals from virginia, these are guys you know. what does that tell you? well, bringing kalif back, he is an old man by now, that tells me a lot. he is an old man by now. he was named a commander at some point, there s a division between the former interior minister and him. it s completely this forest cannot take tripoli as it stands now. the possibility of training these people could take years and years. and even at that, i m not certain of it because the tribal differences will come to play. so this opposition is in
all kinds of divisions and i think he would have to be very careful about who took over next. on the other hand, the president like other arab leaders is a master of presenting that as a stark choice, it s either me or absolute chaos. and that s been one of the way in which he held the power so many years. bob baer, syria, you know the country well. initially the syrian president said i m not going to be affected by this because i have adopted a populist policy. pro-iran, pro-hezbollah and pro-hamas. it seemed he didn t have trouble because his security services were more brutal than the egyptians. what do you think will happen there? assad is sitting on a tiger. he can t get down. every single military unit is commanded by an alowite. most of them have ties to the assad family, either tribal or blood ties. this whole system if it came undone would turn into a sectarian war, no doubt about it.
at this moment, the syrians are considering intervening into tripoli and lebanon because they are paranoid that the muslim brotherhood is forming there is going to start attacking cities. it doesn t matter whether it s true or not. it s paranoia that drives the regime. so bashar al assad hasn t moved on reform, it doesn t surprise me at all. appointing the agriculture minister as prime minister is completely insignificant and won t take the country anywhere soon. what s going to happen on the street is going to unfold. we can t predict it but it could get nasty. if some of the things bob baer says about syria happen, what is your explanation for why the west should not intervene in syria on behalf of protesters there but should do so in libya? we cannot intervene