Transcripts For FOXNEWSW The Five 20130902 : vimarsana.com

0 had not been done since hussein had done it in iraq. and that s the difference. that s what he talked about. his red line was about using chemical weapons and that s what he was doing. let me ask you this, i understand the resolution they sent to the hill has been changed now by members of the congress. do you have any idea what the change until the resolution is? sure. some of the changes as i understand it and talking to democratic sources on the hill is they felt on the democratic side that it was too open-ended. while the president s been saying this will be a limited mission, there was not explicit language in there making clear the u.s. will not send in ground troops, for example. so democrats want to narrow this. but back to my original point, it may not be democrats who decide this. it may be republicans. that s why the president had two prominent republicans here today. and what these republicans are saying don t narrow the scope of this, they re saying what their concern is is that the president just wants to do a symbolic shot across the bow as the president said last week in the pbs interview. and while mccain and graham are not saying ground troops, they want something in the middle. something that actually decimates assad s military. not just some symbolic movement that s going to make people feel good, maybe, but not going to make a difference. hi, ed. it s kimberly. i want to talk about the impact on israel. first of all, number one, the president doesn t have support from his key supporters, we don t have support from our key allies and now the impacts on israel could also have, you know, could be quite tremendous. you raise a great question. and i just talked to a senior white house official who said one of the points the president made in the oval office with mccain and graham was the impact on our allies, not just israel, jordan, turkey, there are others in the region who if we don t stop assad, essentially, assad could use chemical weapons against israel. now, that probably would be a grave mistake in his part not only israel would be drawn therein but the u.s. face more intense pressure to get involved and help our ally like israel. but the bottom line is this is a powder keg in the mideast right many other democratic leaders and actually back the president strongly on this because they know there are others in their caucus who are not so on board. so i think the bottom line is the president has a lot of work to do there. what happens next? white house officials i talked to in private very frankly say even in congress votes this down, they believe the president has executive power to move forward unilaterally anyway. after the vote in the british parliament and it went down, if this goes down in congress september 9th or some time later next week, even if the president does have that power, reagan, clinton, others used it, it s clear he probably does have that power. if he does have congress votes it down, we re going to be in an even more difficult spot. and that s why mccain today said that american credibility s on the line and it would be a debacle if congress can t push this through because the commander in chief would be in a pretty desperate position. by the way, even if they win he was going to have to use political capital he was going to use somewhere else. ed, we re going to say thank you. thanks for a great body of work reporting this whole weekend. thank you very much. let s do this. listen to what ed was referring to a couple hours ago, maybe less than two hours ago senator mccain. if the congress were to reject a resolution like this after the president of the united states has already committed to action, the consequences would be catastrophic. okay. dana, let me go to you first. looking at that picture of the white house, the oval office, we saw president obama flanked by senator mccain and senator graham, what a shocking turn of events, right? this is a very bizarre situation. i commend graham and mccain the other person in the picture is susan rice, national security advisor. remember mccain and graham are two of the main senators who said they could not support her for secretary of state. so now there s all these weird relationships going on. it is so weird for me to see mccain sitting in that chair, where s joe biden? why wasn t he in the meeting? maybe he had something more important to do. i would be surprised what are the problems with the resolution when it went to congress was that the republicans said, well, what s the end game? what is the plan? how can you announce a shot across the bow and that s it? what s the additional? but democrats have been saying that the resolution was not narrow enough. before you answer that, can we go to president obama and charlie wrangle taking two we have been very clear to the assad regime but also to other players on the ground that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized. that would change my calculus. that would change my equation. this whole idea of any president of the united states drawing a line saying that if any country does something that he considers wrong, that the nation is going to war, it s unheard of drawing a red line. so of course it s embarrassing. i wish it didn t happen. robert? well, i m not charlie s view is charlie s view, but i think one of the things we haven t mentioned here is israel, both israel and saudi arabia have supported going in and making this strike. secondly, when mccain talks about a plan, what plan? what end game? what does he have in mind? i always like to hear the republicans say, gee, what s the plan and don t have any suggestion of what to do? you re agreeing i m hoping there s a very specific recommendation which was not just a shot across the bow but to end the capability to be able to do to launch anymore attacks. that s not what the original plan was. they re not asking for troops on the ground. mccain did go into detail. and he actually went much further than the president went, which is i think an even tougher sell at this point. but, look, this is a situation of president obama s own making. how can you possibly say that? he drew this red line how can you possibly say that? he s responsible for launching chemical weapons that killed can i finish? . you re very wound up today. it s been 30 months they have been torturing people in syria. this president had a recommendation by hillary clinton and general petraeus years ago, a year and a half ago in fact to get involved and he hasn t. he has dithered, his response is now feeble. and he says we re going to launch this attack to send a message to other nations? is the attack supposed to be so small hang on. how can you influence other nations? let me get kimberly in here. president obama drew the red line and then said carry out we have to go, it s go-time. and then he said i need congressional support, we re confused. it makes us look even weaker as a country. sorry, bob, it does. he should have gone in before because if you do a body count, there was justification to go in against syria earlier. i get the whole thing drawing the line about chemicals, but he is now a man without supporters. now he s got to turn to mccain and graham, that is an untenable position. he s going to have the anti-war democrats all over him. he s going to have to have enough votes to ensure those guys that they don t have to vote to support this for him. he s got a big problem on his hands. and if he doesn t go in without congressional support anyway, he s going to look the good news is, robert, i hate to cut you off and i m going to be yelled at by your supporters, but we have a whole other segment. we ll talk about this more. when we come back we ll continue the analysis of a possible military strike on syria. and later, the best and worst stories of the summer. we ll run down our favorites. and could the five of us ever live together? 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