neither the white house nor even the house speaker, his loyal opposition leader, his u.k. parlance, doesn t want to have a disaster on his hand, which is an embarrassing vote in the u.s. that would hurt his credibility. one of those who would have supported a vote would have been barack obama. it now doesn t seem as important to him to get that congressional approval. i think he s certainly working closely, consulting with congress. you saw him today stress that, you saw secretary kerry stress that. there have been a lot of read-outs from both sides talking about how they just communicated with the president. remember, he still hasn t made the decision. phil, campaign issue down the line? syria? you think we ll ever hear about
it is very clear tonight that while the house has not passed a motion, it is clear to me that the british parliament reflecting the views of the british people does not want to see british military action. i get that and the government will act accordingly. we go live to the state department with the latest on the international reaction to a possible strike. what is the latest? reporter: the latest is they ll definitely be calling them french fries at the white house once again. i think that france obviously considered a very close ally, the fact that the british did not are not taking part i don t think is very important. tabtically certainly the u.s. is willing to go it alone and has the military resources to do so but symbolically it is a bit of a blow. there are other countries supporting the u.s. politically and militarily. you have the turks, a neighbor of syria, they re willing to
developments on the situation in syria. you just heard the president say that the united states does not plan to send troops there. that really leaves air strikes as the most likely response to the assad regime s use of chemical weapons. we bring in pentagon correspondent barbara starr. if the president gave the order, how soon would the military be ready to go? reporter: the military says, especially with the fire warships say they are ready very quickly to go. what this waits for now, john, is an execute order from the president, the president saying go. once that happens, the order goes to the pentagon and goes out to commanders in the fleet and they will be ready very quickly because these cruise missiles that would theoretically launch of a these five warships, they are guided to their targets by satellite coordinates. so a lot of this is already preprogrammed to go after those syrian targets that the president knows are the military option on the table. syrian targets command
august 2 1st. the key here to remind everyone, the white house said no boots on the ground, a limited action and the goal is not regime change but to punish syria for going ahead and using chemical weapons. let s get now to fredrik pleitgen. fred, what s the reaction out of syria to what the president and also the secretary of state had to say today? reporter: john, it was actually very interesting because normally it takes the assad regime quite long to issue statements and responses to things but today it went very quickly, right after john kerry s speech there was urgent banners up on syrian state tv essentially saying the u.s. was trying to protect its key ally, israel, in the region, always trying to put u.s. very close to
would involve boots on the ground that, would involve a long-term campaign, but we are looking at the possibility of a limited, narrow act. now, just a short time before that, secretary kerry used language that sounded quite a bit more forceful as he gave the broad strokes outlining the evidence that the u.s. says it has on syria. it matters because if we choose to live in a world where a thug and a murderer like bashar al assad can gas thousands of his own people with impugnity, even after the united states and our allies said no and then the world does nothing about it, there will be no end to the test of our resolve. kerry also strongly indicated that the u.s. is willing to lead this effort after its closest ally, great britain, essentially