for turning for really reaching a deal that is then enforceable. david kay, does that make sense logistically? 30 days? i think reaching a deal in 30 days i think ought to be the minimum. but testing the deal. we simply don t have enough qualified inspectors to really you can test with a probably the number we have. and we haven t even discussed the issue of who are the inspectors? are the syrians going to accept americans and french and brits and germans and russians as the inspectors? are they going to want this nonexistent neutral inspection capability? at the heart of this, david, don t you think, leaving aside some of the logistics, what are the russians intentions here? as andrew was saying, you can make the case this is a win/win for putin. he gets assad stays in power, in fact, he has to provide access. he s the conduit for all this. and the weapons get taken away. the russians have always worried
i did. i did. but he really engaged the american people. i thought it was very effect to say people have written to me and this is what they said and i m listening and i m engaging. i also think he made a point tonight that i ve not heard him make that was very important. he started with world war i and he reminded everybody that our soldiers have died from poison gas. then of course he mentioned the holocaust. but then he made the point that if assad is not stopped he will use chemical weapons more, other dictators will feel free to do that, and our soldiers are more likely to come under gas again. and remember in the first iraq war, we thought that we were going to face chemical weapons. so he closed the loop about how it directly affects american security. let s talk about the reality, the logistics of actually doing this, securing these weapon sites, ultimately destroying them. i want to bring in experts to the table, david kay former
so you re bringing all that equipment in. you ve got to know where they are, then you ve got to go verify that the statements by the syrian regime as to where the chemical arms are and in fact what type of chemical weapons is in each location is accurate and true. and you ve got to provide some means of maintaining security of those sites after you survey them to be sure that they don t disappear the moment you leave. so you re providing you ve got to provide 24/7 monitoring of every site that has chemical weapons and possibly the means of delivery of chemical weapons since they are so closely associated. that is a huge task. david kay, it s christiane amanpour. you obviously did this for years during iraq. is it even possible to do this in a state where there is a civil war, a hot war going on? well, look, all i can say is it s never been done in a state of this size in a civil war. i hate to say it s impossible actually because people told me it was impossible what we were
chief of u.s. weapons inspectors in iraq and now cnn analyst and on the state department s advisory board. david, thank you for being with us. walk us through how large an operation this would have to be and the kind of a timetable realistically that we re talking about. we re talking you and i talked in the 8:00 hour. you said between 500 and 1,000 inspectors. that has nothing to do with even maintaining their security, right? right. that s correct. look, the first thing to do is to have what are the rights of the inspectors. you have to have freedom of movement. communications, bring your own equipment. the obligation of the government to provide security and protection. then you get on-site. inspectors of chemical weapons have to come with protective gear. you re entering environments in which chemical weapons may actually be leaking, may be quite hazardous. you re bringing all of that equipment in. you re coming over a very long and insecure lifeline. right now it has to run
that is not possible? please because you don t want to interfere right now and impose a political solution to end the mass keshgs massacre, not only the chemical weapons, you might suffer. the american people will suffer. everybody in the world will suffer. only because you are living a dictator. we ve got a minute left. this is fundamental. this is a war that s gone on for 2 1/2 years. the united states with the voice of the president of the united states said, assad must step down. yes. is that out of the window now with this diplomatic initiative? is obama, assad, putin sort of inextricably linked now in order to solve the terrible problem of chemical weapons? no. i actually see this another way. we have said from the beginning that the only way out of this was a negotiated solution, that we don t see a military solution. and i think we could have had a military solution a year and a half ago. even i don t think we can have one now.