the first major hearing on syria since the president asked congress to start off on military action will start in a couple of hours. the senate relations committee will get the full lineup. secretary of state john kerry, chuck hagel and general martin dempsey are all going to be present to testify. earlier today the power house line up continued. the president met with members of congress at the white house including nancy pelosi and john boehner, both of whom confirmed they are on board with the president s plan. going to congress to okay military action is not exactly the path that presidents have been taking over and over the last several decades. for example, think back to grenada in 1983, panama in 1989, iraq in 1998.
coordinates, gps coordinates, just like in your car. so they have to have a specific spot programmed in. if that artillery piece is moving around, they re going to have to keep reprogramming the new location, the new location, and keep doing it. now, the military tells us they know very well how to do this. they keep satellites overhead. that is public knowledge. and they keep a very close watch on what the syrian regime is up to. but you know, they re going to i mean, the more the days go on, the more retargeting you do, the more he hides his things, possibly as chemical weapons, possibly moves in civilians into areas that the u.s. might not be aware of. puts weapons in schools, hospitals, and mosques. this becomes a more and more complex targeting problem. and i think you re going to hear a lot about this at the hearings on capitol hill this afternoon. it s well-known, human shields. we ve seen dictators do it many atime. sometimes live human shields like saddam hussein did in 19
one of the interesting parts of this crisis in syria is what s not happening inside syria and that is that barbara starr has brought to our attention there s not a lot of defections going on among the high-level military commanders under bashar al-assad. does that mean anything in particular? and just what about their assets, just how good are the forces of bashar al-assad? joining me now is lieutenant colonel rick francona who is the u.s. military attache. how about that question, colonel? how good are assad s assets? we ve heard terrific and then we re starting to hear maybe not so much. they were terrific, given the context of where he s operating. he s operating against his own people. regionally he s not that strong. internally he s the only game in town. so he s been able to take quite a toll on his own people. you talked about defections. we saw a slew of defections at
parliament rejecting the idea, i doubt the president would have gone this way. the united states would have had britain, turkey, saudi arabia and could have done it without the u.n., nato. he felt he needed to go to congress. just minutes ago when speaker boehner supported the strategy, i think you see the president gaining real momentum for the case of striking on syria. unlike john mccain or lindsey graham, there were no slaps at president obama from boehner. he came on as if his best friend and ally was barack obama. you ll now see in congress a fight between the rand paul tea party libertarians and john boehner and the conservative republicans. as question await the answer, just a quick answer, if they so,
and political pressure required so that ultimately we have a transition that can bring peace and stability not only to syria but to the region. but i want to emphasize once again what we are envisioning is something limited, it is something proportional. it will degrade assad s capabilities. at the same time, we have a broader strategy that will allow us to upgrade the capabilities of the opposition, allow syria ultimately to free itself from the kinds of terrible civil wars and death and activity that we ve been seeing on the ground. so i look nor waforward to list to the various concerns of the members today. i m confident those concerns can be addressed. i think it s appropriate that we act deliberately but i also think everybody recognizes the urgency here and then we re going to have to move relatively quickly. so with that, to all of you here today i look forward to an