sorry, come along, man. jon: rick reichmuth. thanks. i ll be there. we have seen flickers in the intelligence of potential al qaeda, hezbollah. we ve seen different things but at this point i don t have detail sufficient to say that there s a significant al qaeda presence or any other terrorist presence in and among these folks. jenna: that was nato supreme allied commander in europe speaking about operations in libya. what does that mean about the flickers of al qaeda but no significant presence? who are these libyan rebels? michael scheurer is author of bin laden. michael, what is your interpretation of that, flickers of al qaeda. the general was trying to cover as best he can for the president, secretary of
republicans shut the if the government shut down, i think it will hurt the republicans. but as i point out in revolt , my book, if the republicans shut down specific agencies, whole government will operate. we just won t build new highways. we won t give out foreign aid. we just won t give out inner city infrastructure repair money. cut those specific programs and leave the rest of the government fine, then the democrats will be blamed correctly because they re the ones that are going to say, ok, i m going to hold the rest of the government hostage until you retreat from those budget cuts. gotcha. interesting thesis. let s see if anybody in washington has got a pen and paper this morning and is taking notes. dick, thank you very much. thank you. he s the author of revolt. meanwhile, with the middle east in crisis, where s joe biden? aspen skiing, of course, is that a good idea? we ll talk about it. he also had some interesting words with regard to libya. so much for the pl
in eastern libya. three hours from ben ghazi so there s a real le jat mgitimate and you have to put boots on the ground to train them for this stuff. exactly. that s one of the fallacies of going in that we did, assuming it would be over quickly. we d use our technology, get in and get out. and it would be toppled, qaddafi would be toppled and everybody would be happy. the problem is who are these rebels? two weeks ago, what did you see? you saw pictures of guys on the back of trucks with rifles. the minute that qaddafi came, they jumped off the truck, threw down the rifle and ran away. so we see that hillary clinton meeting again with some other leaders and we france has recognized them as legitimate government of libya and so has the united arab emirats or qatar, should we give it a shot? we have a legal problem with the arming the rebels thing because we embargo or we didn t sell weapons to libya, ok? they re libyans. we have to give or sell.
rights in the state of washington. their pay went up double digits in some cases and state spending went up 33% in the first four years after they got collective bargaining rights, jenna. jenna: no protests needed. we are a lot more melo out there. we have to go to georgetown, university. the president will be speaking about energy security. this coming just a few days after obviously talking about the situation in libya. he s expected to talk a little bit about libya, as well as what we ve seen in japan with the nuclear disaster there and talk about how those situations may or may not affect our own policies here depress particularly. let s go ahead and listen to the president. thank you so much. everybody please have a seat, please have a seat. it is wonderful to be back at georgetown. [cheering] we ve got a number of
in syria you re opening up a can of worms that i think the administration is very reluctant to do. a reformer he s certainly not. but a key player in the regional dynamic that we see unfolding. syrian president bashar al-assad definitely is. jenna: i only have 30 seconds to wrap it up. what should our policy be towards syria? reporter: i think the president s speech on libya a couple of days ago was a really good benchmark prism through which to view all this. the president s speech was by all accounts a very forceful defense of what the add minimum straying is doing in libya. but whether or not that example actually becomes translated to a more forceful stance on syria and iran remains to be seen. i suspect the administration is very forceful on libya because in the grand calculus it doesn t matter as much and syria and iran water a great deal. jenna: that s very interesting. we didn t even get to iran, i hope we can get to it in the future. thank you very much for your