Assad W News Today

They have taken over this whole area. >> reporter: the government militia continues to torture and murder their own people, using tanks in surprise raids. >> translator: im not the only one whose life has been destroyed or whose husband is missing. everyone in this country has a missing person or a destroyed home or is displaced. we have been through so much. we have suffered and have come to hate life because of all these problems. >> reporter: e-mails obtained by cnn apparently from the assad ...

Kill more of his own people. it goes beyond that. its important to point out how this is a national security issue for the united states directly. not only our interest in the region but they could try to deploy the weapons to israel, to go to turkey, go to the kurds, our allies in iraq. we had to take action here. i think it was good he took such a decisive step. i think respectfully with regard to senator paul, i think he is wrong here. this was a national security threat. if there are additio...

And labeling them terrorists and it did ultimately, obviously, isis grew and he released extremists from syrian prisons and kind of created the enemy that he was originally calling the peaceful protesters. >> president assad best understands the language of force. i dont think he is worried his credibility when he tells falsehoods, when he tells lies. to him its all about balance of power. the balance of military forces on the ground, thats how he operates many thats how the syrian government op...

Lets bring in the panel, fareed zakaria, mark hertling and c and clarissa ward. have you seen or heard talk of a shift in the balance of power or any kind of change on perceptions of the balance of power? >> well, i think, anderson, you are not going to see a shift on the battlefield in terms of this is unlikely to really reign in the winning streak that the regime of assad has been on. but where you might see a bit of shift in balance is in this larger proxy war. for a long time now, the u.s. h...

Sorry, regarding syria. we have used the military against isis. we have used -- attempted in the obama administration to use massive amount of diplomacy with the russians and the syrians. those are only two of the powers and theyre not synchronized. if you bring all the elements of national power to bear, diplomacy, military, economy, information, were starting to see some informational tools being used against the russians because they have been the ones supporting assad. the last thing i would...

I think the office -- being in office is different than being a civilian and reading about the stuff in the paper or even as a candidate. when you hear people asking that wag the dog theory, what do you think? >> the first thing i tell them is take a step back and recognize that president trump passed his first test on the world stage. he was challenged. he stood up. he was decisive. he moved quickly. i think he had excellent results. when we talk about previous comments he made, what he is face...

That in the long run, our strategy has to be an isis first strategy, not an american first strategy. isis is the main target. isis is the main enemy. in that context, theres only so much we can do to weaken assad. because lets say we were to keep going on this path. the weaker assad gets, stronger isis gets. not tactically, because theyre always fighting in the same area. but overall, you know, the two strongest military forces in syria are isis and assad. were now in the next few weeks going to...

Experience in places like iraq, afghanistan, yemen. you go from the dictator to chaos. >> go ahead. >> thats not what i was suggesting. i appreciate that. you are talking forced regime change. boy, have we learned some really bad lessons about doing that. with the power of diplomacy with forcing the russians to do some things with mr. assad, with information and perhaps with some type of federation -- i dont know. im not a politician. but i do know there might be a better way as opposed to force...

Families have suffered those same exact dead babies and who want to come here to be able to save the rest of their children, thats where you have the cynicism and the hypocrisy involved. we need a strategy. we need what he is going to do there long-term. >> jason, senator rand paul has been critical of the strike. i want to play something he said earlier. >> our founders in the original days believed that war should be declared by congress. before you get into the debate of whether we should or ...

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