single weapon shell, container, and then you have to like demining any other careful thing, you would have to then confirm there were no other chemicals. the problem is, saad doesn t control his borders. he doesn t even control some of the weapons dumps. there s no absolute in this discussion. secondly, while this is going on, and you said after the war, the war is not going to stop. great point. if this is one agreement this does not end the war. the war is a continual battle of shelling and aerial strikes between assad s troops and civilians and rebels in the country. there s going to be a war going on. great point, and perhaps a subconscious well wishing on my behalf. that is not at all ending. in talking to experts, you think of the gulf war, you think of saddam hussein saying to scientists, hey, you can t tell everyone where all of our, you know, weapons are, or else you re out. how can i shouldn t say we, how can the world, how can these
34 countries in declaring that the assad regime is responsible for the use of chemical weapons on that night. even iran, which is fighting on ass assad s behalf in syria has blamed the assad regime for the august 21st attack. in the preparations for the attack and in our post-attack observations, it s common sense that they don t have the capabilities to coordinate an artility attack from a regime held neighborhood targeting opposition neighborhoods. i think it s also worth pointing out there s a great irony that in the placement of an op-ed like this, because it reflects the truly exceptional tradition in this country of freedom of expression. and that is not a tradition shared in russia, by russia, and it is fact freedom of expression has been on the decrease over
where these chemical weapons are, the facilities, and they would have to go in. inspectors would have to go in and verify. in the iraq case, actually, i think what did happen over that decade was that the iraqi officials did provide those lists. inspectors did verify them. in some cases, there were mistakes. remember, in the course of that period, a huge number of iraq s chemical and biological weapons were destroyed. in fact, you know, richard butler, the man who headed up the last u.n. inspection team, in his final report said he thought all but a small handful of chemical weapons had been destroyed, and in point of fact, he argues that that is why we found no wmd, no weapons of mass destruction in iraq when we went in and invaded, that in fact the u.n. inspectors in a very long, complicated cat and mouse game, had managed to do it. but the key was they had to get, you know, the initial inventory is very important. what you say you have, and then the ability to check whether or not t
the use of the indiscriminate use of chemical weapons needs to be addressed. we are addressing that. the president has spoken clearly about his views on it. we re exploring this diplomatic avenue, this opportunity that exists, potentially to resolve this by removing from assad s possession chemical weapons. but we will continue our policy of supporting the opposition in an effort to bring about a political settlement in the syrian conflict. on the budget, you addressed it a little bit yesterday, but the house leadership is still trying to find a way to get a continuing resolution for the government beyond october 1st. now they re talking domestic issues. i m brooke baldwin. you have been listening to white house spokesman jay carney taking questions. an important q & a when it comes to syria, the new york times op-edfrom the president of russia today, vladimir putin. all of the above we ll be
so let s talk about how exactly this would work. joining me is the author of the book entitled the world s most dangerous places. he s war correspondent robert pelton. so robert, welcome. i have a lot of questions for you. beginning with, from everything i have read about this, in terms of the task at hand, i understand there are only several hundred people in the world with this kind of expertise to go in a country, to find these things and presumably destroy them. who are they? first of all, the u.s. army has an entire group set up just for chemical weapons handling and destruction. but realistically, once you find these caches, you have to destroy them in place, which means you have to physically build a destruction factory that either incinerates these at high heat or uses some of the newer methods. that takes year, not something that s going to happen overnight. secondly, these kax caches are