and that part you picked up on, the dig about american exceptionalism was one part of it. could this be the best path, at least from his perspective, bashar al assad, to saying, you know what? i m going to give up my chemical weapons, acknowledge i have chemical weapons, let the u.n. come in destroy those chemical weapons? assuming he s thinking maybe this is the only way i remain in power in damascus? do you think he s thinking along those lines? you know, for assad, clearly it is some kind of an exit strategy that might allow him to stay in power. i wouldn t say it s the best case for him because he built up this enormous chemical weapons arsenal and it s huge, largely because it was aware of threatening people, scaring people, of keeping people in line. it s also in part meant to be a deterrent against israel, the feeling waser. has nuclear weapons, israel has a much stronger military force, the syrians always wanted to have something that they thought the israelis would be scar
this to the very end he ll talk about, you know, securing these weapons and also, explaining it in america s national security interest. when you look at the details, i mean, we heard from david kay. when you look at the details of the difficulty, how long it takes and how many people, more than a thousand inspectors, 500 to a thousand, david kay said, the devil is in the details. the devil is in the details but the bigger problem is the sale. the president fund mentally was approaching this with the idea he had to sell the idea that it was important to take military action against syria, and what we know going into the speeches, he did not have a majority of the american people. he did not have majority of the congress or nato. he did not have a majority of the united nations security counsel. in other words, a very tough sale and now you have the exit strategy and alternative which is a potential diplomatic solution, very fraud, complicated with the problems
achieved one major thing there. as your previous guest talked about, obviously at some point because you have a civil war there, you are going to have to try to put in place much more substantial, stable, moderate government. that may be a lot further off than what we can achieve at the u.n. in terms of the chemical weapons. ip we re all hopeful for a peaceful resolution. do you think the united states can trust putin and trust assad to really pursue this exit strategy? well, i think we have to pursue it. what does your heart tell you. trust but verify. i have heard that before. you have heard it many times. i think we need to work with him, pin it down. how much time should we give? i think we should let it run its course. i think the president s people, the secretary of state, samantha
oh. the president thinks it will be a powerful signal to assad. we don t know what it s going to be. it s going to be one day, and then two days and now three days because he s moving weapons around. i don t know if there s an exit strategy. people don t understand what the mission is. he s making a larger point you can t use gas, if you do the united states is going to get y you. we haven t done it so far. he s going to reiterate there s a small contingent, no boots on the ground. can we use a different phrase, maybe sneakers on the ground, sandals? i m tired of it, tired it have.
seize the chemical weapons. so as much as this sort of option seemed like a convenient maybe exit strategy, if you will, the realities of it are much more nuanced and potentially much more difficult. well, it would be terrific if we could get our arms around all these stockpiles and get rid of them, but that said, it s true that this is very complicated. we don t know where they ve been spread. we know pretty well 19 of the sites. there were 42 sites originally. how many more are there now? it does require boots on the ground. we don t know whether that 75,000 number it was one analyst in london, i think. i m not sure that was a pentagon figure. the fact is that when u.n. inspectors go in, they would need protection. they would be subject to attacks from al qaeda related terrorists. last thing you want is for the u.n. to be collecting this stuff using american and british and french intelligence and have it attacked by terror groups who then make off with the chemical