questions each. let s start with where is mark? there he is. new york times. reporter: good afternoon. both of you talked about syria a good deal in your opening remarks. and i wanted to ask a bit about that. the latest round of the geneva ii talks have proven to be as unproductive as the first round was. the chemical weapons agreement that you both alluded to has removed some weapons, but by all accounts, it s a small fraction of the overall stockpile the assad regime has, and the syrians have missed a couple of deadlines. and as i don t need to tell you, the syrian regime is essentially starving thousands of syrians in homes and elsewhere. everybody agrees that more pressure needs to be brought to bear on the assad regime to change this deadly equation. and so i wonder, beyond the
opposition for some time. it was delivered by rockets. rockets which we know the assad regime has, and we have no indications that the opposition has. and you ve now seen cnn in fact ran these videos yesterday. you ve seen the video proof of the outcome of those attacks. all of that leads to, as i say, a quite strong common sense test, irrespective of the intelligence that suggests that the regime carried this out. now, do we have a picture, or do we have beyond reasonable doubt evidence? this is not a court of law, and intelligence does not work that way. so what we do know and what we know the common sense test says he is responsible for this. he should be held to account. and we are just learning, cnn has learned that denis mcdonough will meet with house democrats on monday. this follows the president s announcement that on tuesday he is going to take his case for u.s. action against syria to the american people, and also the
we re not going they have a veto in the security council. you know what this is, if the world was a homeroom, the united states is the lunge head hated quarterback that everyone makes fun of until saturday when he s expected to throw the bomb. we re the ones that have to do this, when something really bad happens, even before we do anything, we re on the defensive. we didn t gas anyone, but somehow the world is warning us that we better watch out. and who is this international community. we have a better chance enlisting epcot center. as bad as this sounds, the syrian, at least the israelis got along with bashar al assad. there was some harmony in that area. is there any indication, if the rebels take over, there will be peace in the middle east? no, and i think bob is right, we don t know who s on our side. the rebels have been able to allocate us. the assad regime has hezbollah.
we re not going they have a veto in the security council. you know what this is, if the world was a homeroom, the united states is the lunge head hated quarterback that everyone makes fun of until saturday when he s expected to throw the bomb. we re the ones that have to do this, when something really bad happens, even before we do anything, we re on the defensive. we didn t gas anyone, but somehow the world is warning us that we better watch out. and who is this international community. we have a better chance enlisting epcot center. as bad as this sounds, the syrian, at least the israelis got along with bashar al assad. there was some harmony in that area. is there any indication, if the rebels take over, there will be peace in the middle east? no, and i think bob is right, we don t know who s on our side. the rebels have been able to allocate us. the assad regime has hezbollah.
chairman of the house intelligence committee, mike rogers, saying that there is a high probability that the assad regime has, in fact, used chemical weaponry although they are waiting final verificatiove. bearing in mind, too, there s been allegations in the past that chemical weapons were used in syria in h ho ms, for example, late last year but those allegations were never substantiated. the white house has been saying in the past that this would be something of a red line, a game changer when it comes to syria. piers, when i was last there in december in the city of aleppo, doctors there working with the rebels were actually trying to design their own chemical suits and masks because they had absolutely nothing with which they could protect themselves, and so the opposition does believe that if pushed into a corner the assad regime most certainly would resort to that kind of weaponry. but, again, at this point in time, it has not been completely verified that these chemical weapons