do it. chemical attack against men and women. the russians are complicit, they are asadd s sponsors and they had to have known what he was up to. i want to bring in the debate this week has been not whether to attack in response to this chemical weapons attack or what is believed to be a chemical weapons attack but how much to respond. the president wanting a sus stain taned attack.
military balance out on the ground. the point that secretary mattis has been making is that this is a crisis that has required an international solution to get assad out of power. and right now, there is a very adamant view at the defense department and i think in the intelligence agencies it is fair to say that the russians want assad in power. they like having him there. it gives them free reign inside syria. and valuable territory and a port on the mediterranean. so they are very happy to have asadd there. how do you intensify the russians to get him out? bombs, missiles are not going to
of important developments in the middle east and north africa. most of them troubling. the brutal regime in syria declared general amnesty today but human rights groups and the obama administration are quick to label it a sham. designed they say to distract attention from a bloody crackdown. in yemen, civil strife spread after a cease fire agreement between the government and opposition forces in the capital city collapsed. the regime of moammar gadhafi in libya defiantly today again vowed to hold power, rejecting the latest effort to broker a diplomatic solution to the civil war there. the united states top human rights officer in bahrain was recalled to washington after coming under attacks in media accounts that u.s. officials believe were orchestrated by hard line government officials. bahrain, remember, is supposed to be a top u.s. ally in the region. a lot of ground to cover. let s focus first on syria. the amnesty offer was for all crimes committed against the governm
regime change. the bahraini government complicit, the state department would say, in accounts in the news media smearing the top human rights official at the u.s. embassy in bahrain. sure. so do you see any effort in the region to push asadd aside or in this one oddly are the saudis and iranians allied in thinking we don t want meddling and we don t want more regimes changed? john, actually on syria, the assad regime has successfully sold us the idea it is either the assad regime or sunni fundamentalism. the muslim brothers in syria. this is the major fear in the region. this is how the assad regime worked its kind of side of the argument. so it s not really about what the saudis think the syrians are doing. i don t think the arab regimes as a whole are going to single out the syrian regime for condemnation the way they broke with the gadhafi regime. it tells you the difference between the skill of the syrian