What it wants to do. And i dont get that. Another big story tonight is the debt ceiling battle. Treasury secretary jack lew on cnbc this morning said president obama will not negotiate over the debt ceiling bill and now it looks like a battle royal is brewing in washington, d. C. These stories and many more coming up in the kudlow report beginning right now. Good evening, everyone. Im larry kudlow. This is the kudlow report. In a major developing story, nbc news is reporting a strike against syria could come as early as thursday. Aids say president obama and no longer questions if the Syrian Government used chemical weapons. The questions are what will the u. S. Do and with whos help. Nbcs Richard Engel joins us now from the turkey syria border with all the latest details. Good evening, richard. Reporter larry, syria is showing no signs by being deterred of all of this talk of military action. In fact, just yesterday there was another attack that rebels say used chemical agents. A White Phosphorous attack that doctors say killed at least 12 people. White phosphorous technically isnt a chemical weapon, but it is illegal if its used to kill people. Its a burning agent, a burning smoke used by many militaries. In this case it was dropped on civilians according to the rebels. Today syrias foreign minister said that the country by all means necessary if, in fact, it is attacked by the United States or some sort of coalition of western and arab states. And by all indications, some military activity is coming. A coalition, International Consensus is being formed. Today the arab league expressed its condemnation of the use of chemical weapons. Already france, turkey, the u. K. Has expressed their support for potential military action. Nbc is hearing that there will likely be strikes potentially in the next two days and that they could last three days with more cruz missiles being the most likely instrument of war, larry. Many thanks, as always. Richard engel from nbc. A new piece in the wall street journal says the military action should aim to kill syrian president bashar al a assad. Retired Army Brigadier general, Deputy Assistant secretary of defense of the middle east and former assistant secretary of state. Welcome, gentlemen. Brett stephens, thank you for coming on. It was a hell of a piece. I enjoyed it. Should president obama decide to order a military strike against syria, his main order of business should be to kill Bashar Al Assad. Also his brother and principle henchmen. Expand upon that for us, brett. Whats your thinking here . If the purpose is to express our horror and revulsion at the use of chemical weapons and to impose penalties on those who use them in a way that the lesson will be learned by other dictators, then have you to impose a kind of International Death penalty on bashar assad. Nothing else will do. Certainly not the kind of strikes that this administration seems to be contemplating which is mainly aimed at making a political statement rather than actually achieving any kind of effect either on the assad regime behavior or its ability to continue to wage the horrific war on its own people. Brett, let me followup with this point. The editorial page wants regime change. Jay carney from the white house said absolutely not regime change. It seems like the white house is deliberately, i dont know, putting a softer spin on this action after this incredible, you know, immoral use of chemical weapons. What could their motive be . Whats their strategy here . Im actually stunned by the administrations behavior. If youve been reading in the papers today, you hear precise information that the strikes are going to last three days, that theyre targeting about 50 sites, that theyre looking at divisions connected with assads union of the republican guard, you might as well tell them this is where were going to strike. They seem to want to be taking a symbolic action rather than to achieve a military result. The president who says he uses military force so deliberately and cautiously should put american airmen in harms way. John, im about as surprised and not bl understanding all of this as Brett Stephens is. White house also is saying today, this is coming from nbc news, that this is designed, this threeday action or whatever it is going to be, to send a message to assad. Okay, send a message. Listen to this, rather than topple him or cripple his military. They want to send a message that they dont want to topple him and they dont want to cripple his military and we have no idea how they expect to get to the Chemical Warfare depots. I dont get this at all. Well, first of all, the british have been expressing we must be seen to be doing something. I think thats exactly what this administration is trying to do. They have boxed themselves into a corner saying we must do something because we established a red line and well lose faith if we dont do something about that. Theyre showing that the chemical weapons in and of themselves are a separate case so we have to address that. We need to punish bashar for using the chemical weapons and we need to demonstrate to anybody who contemplates using chemical weapons in the future that there will be military consequences, yet they dont want to do so much military action to solve the problem in the first case. I thought the article in the wall street journal this morning nailed this completely. The problem is that im more concerned about the regional reaction, number one, iran will sit there and scoff at our lack of doing anything other than lob a couple of cruz missiles down range. Theyll worry about americas commitment to the middle east will say this is the best they can do . So im a bit confused, like all of us are, about what the administration is trying to do. Yeah. Syria, if this is the best punch they can throw, im sure syria can take it. Just my thought. I expressed this last night. Im no military expert, lord knows. If were going to bomb, why dont we take out the government palaces, the Government Office buildings, military barracks, various military hears. Why dont we make it plain that were going in to take out the chemical weapons. Apparently we have weapons that can do that. Maybe the army in syria will get so darn angry that theyll take assad, put him in jail or even worse, assassinate him. Do you see what im saying in why arent we hitting everything along the way instead of making light of this . Why dont we hit tremendous shocks and punches rather than weany jabs . That was the point i was making in my column today. We should be striking the symbols, the physical symbols of president ial or Regime Authority in syria both for the symbolic importance and also for putting assad on notice when not only his president ial palace, his get aways on the Mediterranean Sea and the syrian mountains go up in smoke. It is imperfeative that we make assad pay a dear personal price i think ideally with his life for engaging in barbaric behavior and the use of chemical weapons against your own citizens. Otherwise, were inviting him to use chemical weapons and were inviting other regimes to use them as well because they know the west will not react. Thats what the president seems to be doing now. I hope this is a big head fake and he intends something more serious, but it doesnt look that way. Thats the thing, well give you the last word on this. It may not be a head fake, number one. It may not stop assad from using chemical weapons again in the future, number two. I mean, if this is the best punch were going to throw at him, the guy is going to be around. I simply do not understand, general, why we arent using all if were going to do it, why not a 30 to 60 day Bombing Mission . Isnt that what clinton did in kosovo and the balkans years ago . Why not do it day after day after day until the syrian high command sees that its futile . I think for two reasons. Number one, i dont think they really have yet thought about what happens after Bashar Al Assad falls, that theyve got a plan the way that like all military plans, once you achieve victory, there is a post war period. Number two, theyre afraid of inviting comparison to what happened in iraq after the fall of saddam husseins regime. They havent thought their way through this, and i think what were seeing is an abundance of caution on their part and, quite frankly, while we may think its caution, our enemies and our allies in the region think its weakness. All right. We have a little more time. Brett stephens, let me come back to you. Again, on this issue of multiple strikes. If you cant take assad out, if you cant kill him, if you cant kill him, do we know, do we have the technology, i assume we do, basically we can hit all of these individual buildings as you were saying, his Country Place in the mountains . Do we know, you know, these tomorrow mohawk missiles will go up to the traffic lights, stop, make a right turn and go down the chimney . These are awesome weapons of war. What would hold us back from making use of that . Apart from the politics of it, what would hold us back from really just decimating damascus and all the environs. The only issue thats holding us back is the politics of it and all the administration has a fear of repreefg the iraq war, i dont see how because nobodys talking about boots on the ground. The real fear they should have is of reprieving what bill clinton did in 1998 with another threeday strike on saddam hussein, it was called operation desert fox. It was seen as a political distraction on the eve of his impeachment. It strengthened saddam husseins hand internationally, not weakening it. A de minimis strike is going to reap the worst of both worlds. It wont achieve anything, it will make assad look like the victim. Isnt this even a show of weakness to russia and iran, syrias biggest backers . Were endid gauggaged allegedly dispute. I read in the papers that president obama is going to in fact meet with putin when he goes to Saint Petersburg for the g20 meeting. Isnt this a show of weakness to russia and iran . The iranians are all in, hezbollah is all in. It will stake its renewed efforts in sir yeah they have had so far every reason to believe that they can achieve what theyre after and the president is giving them nothing, giving them no reason to be dissuaded. There are geopolitical stakes involved in syria that go beyond syria. They involve all of syria and especially they involve iran. Make no mistake, the israelis will be looking carefully at what this Administration Calls unaccept annual behavior because he says time and again to president obama that nuclear land is unacceptable chemical weapons are unacceptable and look at the small price theyre paying for using them. Well use it. General kimmett, Brett Stephens, we appreciate it. Now its time to take a look at the strong market reaction. Will stocks keep sliding while oil and gold shoots up . Or might there be more to these markets than just syria . We have an expert panel to give you answers. As usual, free market capitalism is the best prospect to success. Im kudlow. Well be right back. When we made our commitment to the gulf, bp had two big goals help the gulf recover and learn from what happened so we could be a better, safer energy company. I can tell you safety is at the heart of everything we do. Weve added cuttingedge technology, like a new deepwater well cap and a stateoftheart monitoring center, where experts watch over all drilling activity twentyfourseven. And were sharing what weve learned, so we can all produce energy more safely. Our commitment has never been stronger. Over 20 million drivers are insured with geico. So get a free rate quote today. I love it how much do you love it . Animation is hot. And i think it makes geicos 20 million drivers message very compelling, very compelling. This is some really strong stuff so you turned me into a cartoon. Lovely. Geico. Fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. Nbc new york says the Syrian Electronic Army is behind a hack attack of the New York Times and twitter. Nbcs new Senior Investigative producer bob windem joins us now. Good evening, larry. The situation is this. The Syrian Electronic Army, which does have very clear ties to the bashir assad regime, launched what is not their first attack on u. S. Media but carried out attacks that should down the New York Times and essentially put a real crimp in the operations of twitter. What is interesting to u. S. Officials here is not so much the targeting because u. S. News media sites are notoriously vulnerable, but the timing. Here we are days away from perhaps a military attack on syria and Syrian Regime is essentially saying, this is the sort of consequence you can expect if you carry out a physical attack, that is, a cyber attack. And what this has happened before. What is the betting that its going to happen again . How seriously do we take this threat . I mean, i couldnt tweet this afternoon for sure. I guess i didnt take this whole thing seriously until you reported it. So now that you have, how long is this going to last . What is our reaction going to be if any . Well, i think the first thing that youre going to see tomorrow is a lot of concern about whether this is just going to be limited to media sites, which is essentially, you know, somewhat of an annoyance. The question is whether they ramp it up in the days ahead to attempt attacks on things like critical infrastructure. That is what the u. S. Government and u. S. Cyber experts around the internet are going tore looking for. What is the next level they take it to. If it is limited to news sites, i dont think people will be that concerned. If they move beyond that, youll start to see concern. Always i shouldnt say always, but what youre starting to see now across the states that are u. S. Adversaries is a growing cyber capability in hopes that they can somehow defer physical attacks with cyber attacks. Do you think just real quick robert, we appreciate your report very much, do you think theyre going to hack into the pentagon . Were about to start a military action. Do you think theyre going to hack into the pentagon . I think theyre going to try. What normally happens is you have a public site thats not that difficult to hack into, then you have the classified site where all the good stuff is and those have been pretty much invulnerable through attacks from hackers as well as from National Entities like the Syrian Electronic Army. Thanks. Nbcs bob win windrem. Well get to stocks. Good day for oil and good day for gold. The situation in syria is rattling our market everywhere. That is next up on kudlow. Nascar is ab. 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The dow, by the way, is down 234 from yesterday. However, the dow is off 909 points, roughly 5. 5 going back to august 2nd. Also today the s p off 26 bucks to close at 1630. The nasdaq off 79 points to 3579. So lets talk about all of this. Joining us now, danielle hughes, ceo of divine capital. Scott nations of nations share. We welcome back lou. Danielle, let us begin with you. Weve gone through all of the numbers. I want to ask some of these questions. A lot of these market movements started before syria. For example, oil was riding before syria and gold was rising before syria. I just want to ask you, im going to get the panels opinion about this, is there something going on in those Commodity Markets besides the war . There has been. Theres been weakness. We saw weaker housing and global goods numbers very recently. Compound that with the concern about syria and youve got a very, very nervous market. But i do think the people have been concerned about whats happening in the economy. Weve seen terrible numbers running up to last week and the beginning of this week, so i do think theres a big concern. People are starting to back into defensive means and defensive things like gold and oil. 18month high in oil, 109 bucks, this is west texas crude. A lot of people think, i was doing some reading on this this afternoon, a lot of people think when oil gets to 115 or thereabouts and stays there its a real negative for the economy. Whats your thought on that . Its absolutely going to be difficult on the economy. Its going to be difficult for anybody who buys gasoline. Youre right, larry. These markets got a little bit of a head start before sir yeah for gold and crude oil, that head start was egypt. As far as our stock market is concerned, our bond markets are concerned, theyve been heading lower and that head start was the taper. I think that because of all of this the taper is going to be pushed back. Larry, todays move was over done i think because the United States is going to act the way that the worlds only super powers should act. It will act the way any great country acts. I hope you are right about that. We just did a segment on that. I hope youre right. Welcome to the show. Lets talk gold for a minute. Gold has been g