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what is discussed behind closed doors there. we also have word that the president will be sitting down with his secretary of defense, james mattis, to discuss, that will be tonight, to discuss a potential response, a potential military response to the situation in syria. gabe gutierrez, our own gabe gutierrez standing by outside mar-a-lago in florida. do we know anything more about the discussion between the president and matt is and looming? reporter: hi, steve, good afternoon. a highly anticipated meeting. defense secretary mattis expected to brief the president later on this evening at mar-a-lago, expected to present him with a range of options regarding the syrian regime of bashar al assad. those options include, would include grounding all syrian aircraft including also strikes against air defenses and perhaps targeted air strikes against whoever s responsible for that chemical attack. as you mentioned, this is one of many issues in the foreign policy front that president
in direct combat. i think we try and avoid that. however, there are always unknown actions that come out of using military power. so if you just politically signaling you re signaling you re angry about something, what happens to the revolutionary guards in iran go after u.s. forces in syria or in iraq? what happens if they put hezbollah up to the israelis? so again, we ought to sit down and say what are we trying to achieve? what are our objectives? and if it is just political signaling, we don t like to see children being killed by chemical weapons. we need to rethink that. the idea of could there be a political solution that may be removes assad from power. the question of assad in russia, russia aligning itself, aligning
the scope of his power, anything lightning th like that? this would be in terms of the goal of the operation, this would specifically this would be a success if there are n more chemical attacks even if he stayses s in power is that fair to say? i think from a military and international legal perspective, yes, the answer to the question is, yes. in other words, we would conduct the strike, do the proportional response, warn the offending party and then stop, reassess the situation. however, if you want my opinion, we have now seen a pattern of behavior from assad going back a decade and it is time for the international community to come together and terminate his efforts in syria. but that s going to be a decision for another day. first and foremost, i believe there will be a proportional strike sometime in the next 24 to 48 hours. all right. admiral james stavridis joining us from boston. thank you for that. appreciate it. again, you heard it right there,
there s going to be an option discussion about regime change. what i think is a lot more likely is going to be a proportionate response directed against the lmts of syrian power that conducted the strike. that means the air force, potentially chemical production facility if we can target that. i think this will be more in the nature of a demonstration, a proportional response with a concurrent warning, obviously to syria, but also to russia. saying that your client, assad, is deeply in violation of international law and, therefore, we will reserve the right to continue to ratchet up the scale of violence, but look initially for proportional decision, perhaps even cruise missile with some limited attack aircraft involved. what would be would the goal then under the scenario you re describing, would the goal simply to be that there are no future chemical attacks, that has nothing to do with the assad staying in power with limiting