everybody's talking about if we don't do something, that it's going to undermine our credibility in the region. well, what happens if we do do something and we don't finish assad? what are our allies going to say? what kind of assad will crawl out and beat his chest and say i won and here i am. how will allies respond to that? >> reporter: the other part of that argument is that if the united states doesn't stand up even on a moral level, then what's the point? what's the point of standing for the kind of morality that the u.s. tends to stand for? >> i think you have to make decisions on a case by case basis. there's no question what this man did was terrible, awful. remember this wasn't the first time he's used gas on his people. this was classified until a few minutes ago as secretary kerry said. that it's been in the teens the number of times he used gas on his people.