No Flight Zone News Today

Iran was helping assad win and we could not consider the geopolitical ramifications of letting iran win this victory and so then you have assad there and iran, more powerful than ever with an iranian election tomorrow and more, you know, forceful leader presumably than ahmadinejad has been. its just the worst possible calculation. and also the weakness that it projected throughout the arab world for us to be dragging our feet. i mean, if the president had not said that the chemical weapons was a...

But i think the fact was that iran was helping assad win and we could not consider the geopolitical ramifications of letting iran win this victory and so then you have assad there and iran, more powerful than ever with an iranian election tomorrow and more, you know, has been. its just the worst possible calculation. and also the weakness that it world for us to be dragging our feet. i mean, if the president had not said that the chemical weapons was a red line, im not aware of other intelligenc...

>> we cant risk letting this country in the heart of the middle east be destroyed by vicious autocrats or hi jacked by the extremists. >> reporter: still, many say the administration needs to do a lot more. >> assad has air sue superior y superiority. another possible, down-the-road alternative is a no-flight zone. >> reporter: but there are a lot of risks. >> there are a lot of groups there. some of them you dont want to be giving weapons to. >> that was nbcs andrea mitchell reporting. john ker...

On the other hand, you talk to libyans and they desperately want u.s. involvement. maybe not troops on the ground. you know, i dont think we should send troops on the ground and many libyans would not want that either. but the kind of intervention that has happened so far in terms of no-flight zone, no-drive zone, air strikes. that is something that seems to have overwhelming support from libyans themselves. and thats a huge difference from iraq. >> now, you know, ive been talking about this thr...

Our joint operations with pakistan, at least, you know, trying to secure that border with afghanistan. and really no clear goal or end in sight? >> well, i think its going to be important that the president explain this in great detail with the american public as well as to the congress. we kind of backed into this last week. you know, the position of the administration had been until late last week, were not going to go into libya, were not going to participate in a no-flight zone. the administ...

Shoulder some of the other aspects of the burden. it does get, david and john, to another question that weve talked about over the last couple days. there still is confusion about the strategy. the no-flight zone is not a strategy. its a tactic. its part of the picture that you got to paint in order to remove gadhafi. there doesnt seem to be a definite strategy as to whether we want to drive him from power, help the rebel army get him out of power, or whether were going to stand by as some kind ...

And the other complication is that nato operates by consensus. all 28 countries have to agree. and at least right now turkey and germany seem to be cool on this idea. could you get a security council in new york to give it credibility? well, china and russia might veto it. it may be a situation like kosovo in 1979 where the united states and a few other countries, nato, perhaps, would have to act without a security council operation even if nato is united. theres all sorts of political impedimen...

Forceful leader presumably than ahmadinejad has been. its just the worst possible calculation. and also the weakness that it projected throughout the arab world for us to be dragging our feet. i mean, if the president had not said that the chemical weapons was a red line, im not aware of other intelligence, but we have to be concerned, where are these chemical stocks? where is assad now moving them? who has control of them? we have to figure that out. we understand the administration is very rel...