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One way or the other, either to use force with or without congressional approval. i just cant see him getting a favorable vote with less momentum than he had 48 hours ago. >> mark halperin, thank you. jeff goldberg, as always. coming up, a tribute to those whose lives were lost on september 11th. the attacks 12 years ago. well talk to joe daniels, the president and ceo of the national september 11th memorial and museum.

President have to get up and talk about difficult foreign affairs news in a way that was asking the american people to join in on hard decisions. thats really never happened. so this was his chance to play that presidential commander in chief role and bring america in about why this is so important to the united states national security interests. you know, ive heard it interpreted here, that theyre going to have 70,000 troops to secure this. ive heard all kinds of craziness here for people who ...

U.n. inspectors in to try to find those sites and how good is the intelligence? do we know what theyve got and where it is? >> the intelligence is pretty good leading up to this conflict. remember, if wed have gotten on top of this two years ago, as many of us were saying, hey, small and effective in the beginning instead of big and ugly later. well, guess what? weve had a lot of missed opportunities along the way. the details, the battle truth has changed over the last two years. so our options...

Provocation from assad himself. its hard for me to see how the back and forth with russia at the u.n. gets him more leverage with congress. he needs a lot more leverage if hes going to get a positive vote, even in the senate, let alone in the house. i think its very difficult. given what the president has said, despite the moral urgency, despite what he said about his ability and constitutional prerogative to strike without, its very hard for me to see how he does it. i just think intuitively i ...

I think i wont be the first to be critical of the way things have been sequenced over the last ten days or so. i think hes left himself now with that speech that on on the one hand, on the other hand, in a very rough place, both in terms of domestic politics and in terms of rallying any sort of coalition at the u.n. or anywhere else to make this come out in a way that achieves his objectives. >> jeff, how is he being viewed in tehran, in jerusalem, in damascus, in moscow? >> each of those capita...

This is the russia that launched a cyber attack on ai stone ya, a military style cyber attack. this is the russia that invade the the country of georgia. this is the russia, by the way, that sent an agent with ploen yum to london to kill a disdent. you know, you have to understand who were dealing with here. so they were looking to gain some space, some battle space for assad, meaning that he could, you know, dig in, get more comfortable, refresh his weapons, and refresh his standing. they got t...

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That is overseen in syria in the middle of a civil war. no one in the syrian opposition has any confidence that will really happen. >> one of the issues is, first of all, where are the stockpiles? we have intelligence on perhaps 19 of 42. how many others are there? have they been dispersed? secondly, youre going to need boots on the ground. we know what happened when they collected chemical weapons from saddam hussein. they have to have escorts. you have trough-related groups who could find this...

Instead of a speech being a call to action, it was a call to postponement, a call to pause. i think thats just the situation they found themselves in. in a way, it was kind of a status report, and the president giving an education, trying to educate the broader country about what the stakes are in syria and whats been going on for the last year in syria. >> im not just saying this because youre my pal and youre there, but this is what people have been saying around here for the last couple of da...