there are severe outcomes that would engulf us. while i think it s great we can share and let s not forget the nuance. each side has pros and cons. making the most informed decision is predicating upon listening to the arguments. it shouldn t be a scarlet letter, but rather a sign of thoughtful decision making. by arguing the merits of a response, it proves we are a country that prides freedom of speech and the deliberation of a duly elected representative. at the ends it is those values that are more transform tiff than any military could ever be. that s it for the cycle. martin, it s all users. thank you to your family for yourself. good afternoon. it s thursday, september 5th, and as congress considers how to respond to syria, the president goes in search of support from international allies at the g-20 summit. president obama in
we bring in business insider josh barro. josh, is this sequence of events at all important or is this just politics as usual in washington? i think the important part of the sequence is that the president got out in front of this issue with the red line comment first effectively committing himself to do something if there was a chemical attack in syria and then during the week with john kerry s statement, essentially signaling this is so bad we have to go to war, and then a key part of the argument for why congress should approve the military action is, well, the president and the secretary of state have already committed us. if we don t follow through, then our credibility will be undermined. effectively we re in the situation where congress nominally has the power to approve and i think may well decline to give that approval, but they re being told that bus the president sort of spoke out of turn ahead of them, their option set is limited. it s one of the key arguments for why they
changed and it was possible to pass 26789 t.a.r.p. i have great difficulty imagining that the president would make this decision he made and then just disregard the wilf congress and attack anyway. interesting. i think we re out of time. i did want to add i don t think the impeachment piece is significant. if there s an unreasonable threat out there that may exist in the republican party, the article 2 authority for the president to order limited strikes is very clear. whether or not congress acts, i think he has that. josh, rational thought and thinking. we love having you on. thanks, abby. 45% of americans told us they don t know enough about syria to decide on military intervention. we ll help you make your mind up next. after all, it s the nbc way. [announcer] there s no hiding the goodness of the latest from
own people. the american intelligence community has high confidence, high confidence. this is common sense. this is evidence. these are facts. but later that night the president changed his mind and on saturday came out and said this. i have decided that the united states should take military action against syrian regime targets. i ve made a second decision. i will seek authorization for the use of force from the american people s representatives in congress. and then yesterday in stockholm, sweden, the president seemed to back away even further. my credibility is not on the line. the international community s credibility is on the line, and america and congress s credibility is on the line because we give lip service to the notion that these international norms are important. okay. red lines, congress, the press, is this a big deal or not?
talk about destroying the relationship between the executive branch and legislative branch if you do something like this, if you sort of go against the wilf congress on something like this. i think it politically makes it near impossible for him to do it. again, he could. he could legally try it. i think it would be really unpopular. this geese back to the conversation we re all having about syria, we re all paying attention to what s going on in syria. this has been a long civil war. i think a vast majority of the country, while they are aware of some parts of what s going on in syria, i think there isn t a lot of information out there and that s why the knee jerk reaction in all of these polls is the default is don t do it, right? that is really the default answer of the american public. as you give them more information, we saw that in our poll, they can come around to it but they need all of that information. what does that mean? that means the president has the