the outcome as existential. when you have a mismatch of existential to conditional national interests, things are going to go wrong, and you re going to have misunderstandings. we have a political problem. we sent a very clear message to the russians, to the iranians and certainly to the syrians that we have to have a political outcome here moaz, let me ask you. what if this is it? what if president trump just walks away from it after that because the signal that he s saying is that was just a limited targeted strike at this air base, and i don t know that there s going to be more than that. what what then? well, i think that, first of all, what the president has done is he s put a down payment on restoring american leadership and credibility in the world. once again this, regime has used chemical weapons so many times, not just in 2013, big strike and
an impact or not. what do you want to see happen next? what should happen next for there to be any reasonable change, meaningful change, in syria? well, the problem was this was a limited military strike. it doesn t change the military balance, and it doesn t answer any of the broader questions. we re no closer at the end of a war that s created the greatest humanitarian crisis since world war ii. it s the messiest modern middle east civil war, and there s no movement towards finding a peace process that would get us to end the war or in identifying people who might be alternatives, viable alternatives, credible leaders to president assad. the russians and the iranians have said the united states, well, if you don t want assad, who do you have, and neither the rebels nor the political opposition forces have come up with someone who is an alternative, so it s great that people feel better perhaps that the world has said that the use of chemical weapons is unacceptable, but we are no
they had everything they wanted in syria. they were the brokers. you know, it was notable last week, jake, when they were bringing together the parties in the cease-fire the united states was nowhere to be found and you had secretary of state tillerson and nikki haley saying perhaps assad need to give in power. what does this give russia, geopolitically the foothold back in the middle east that they have been trying to get a year and a half. it was mission accomplished until this happened and the explosive allegations out of the pentagon yet to be proven will definitely heat things up for when tillerson comes here the middle of next week. all right. paula newton, thank you so much. key members of the house and senate were just briefed by the administration on these strikes against the syrian regime. what did they learn? we ll ask a member of the senate armed services committee next.
it was in response to a very specific attack? it s not an ongoing operation. did began dunford have anything to say about the possibility, and the pentagon is looking into the possibility, that russian forces were actually involved in the chemical weapon attack against syria, syrian individuals earlier this week? that investigation will continue. however, at this time they don t have any concrete evidence that shows that russia was involved. they have been complacent i think in a number of operations that have gone on in syria, but there is no evidence to say that they worked with syria on the specific attack. as president obama was taking action against assad s forces in 2013 after a chemical weapons attack killed more than 1,400 syrians in the suburbs of damascus, then citizen trump treated the warning, quote, the president must get congressional approval before attacking syria. big mistake if he does not. obviously president trump did not get congressional approval
permanent bases that had been built up by the russians there. and, yeah, we had this idea, as the obama administration was ending, an official of that administration said, look, our program to make syria give up all their chemical weapons worked. they are all gone and others said we think they held on to some. it certainly looked like the russians had a lot of reason to know that they were there and a lot of reason to know that an attack was under way. tom foreman, thank you so much. what do the strikes in syria and russia condemning the united states mean for congress investigation into russia s meddling in the 2016 election? we ll talking about that with a member of the house intelligence committee next. stay with us. it s nice to remove artificial ingredients. kind never had to. we ve used real ingredients, whole nuts, and natural flavors from the very beginning. give kind a try.