Transcripts For MSNBCW The Cycle 20130829 19:00:00 : vimarsa

MSNBCW The Cycle August 29, 2013 19:00:00

Back at their hotels after spending another day interviewing survivors and collecting samples. Theyll be coming home on saturday raising speculation that a strike might be on hold until after theyre safely out of damascus. When it comes to whos with us, our major ally with us in this, british Prime Minister david cameron, whos facing his own resistance, but others say they wont join in the strike without u. N. Support. As we suspect, that wont happen since russia holds veto power on the u. N. Security council. Russia is a big assad supporter. Assads other ally is iran which is vowing to strike israel. As a precaution, theyre calling to issue gas masks. Turkey is constructing bunkers and theyre sending experts to the syrian border. Because there are so many parts, were looking at this in three sections. First, were looking a the the pentagon, Whats Going On Behind Closed Doors at the white house and finally the role of congress in all of this. Theyre being briefed tonight on u. S. Intelligence. We start with nbc News Pentagon correspondent jim mikel chef ski. How long before we strike . Once the president gives the go ahead, the order to launch those Missile Strikes against the Syrian Regime and much of those chemical delivery targets, it could be a matter of hours because those targets have been put in place for some time now. They tinker with them on a daily basis when they see them move, some military forces and equipment from here to there. They have the basic target set down. To go after those delivery systems, the rocket launchers, ar till ler ris, tanks. Again, they emphasize as the president and the white house sequenc sequences, and as one official said, wed be doing the same thing. There was a little bit of mutual admiration going on there military to military in the fact that the russians would, in fact, be gathering around what looks like will be some Missile Strikes out of the med here in a few days. All right. Its great to see you. Joining us now at the table is former white house mid east advisor, mark ginsburg. Great to have you here. Underneath it all is our credibility thats on the line. On one end if we dont respond were sending a message to the world that its okay to use chemical weapons and we are not able to follow through on our word. On the other end, if we do take action which it sounds like we will, then youre poking a much bigger hole in the hornets nest. The next question is, what comes up next . Thats what i tried to address this morning when i wrote an article for the huffington post. The morning after is the worst. Was the president s goal to punish assad or to deter him or both . If its to punish him, well, we can fire cruz missiles, he gets his punishment, takes out several control and command centers and god knows what else. If its to deter him from using chemical weapons again, it is the imponderable that no wironen answer. How many cruz missiles does it take . How many times can we do this before the president leaves for the g20. The key is not to just punish. Its to deter assad from using the chemical weapons again. Were not really committed here to removing assad from power so thats going to be a continued problem. We seem to be wanting to police the conflict. You can do this, you can kill Hundreds Of Thousands of people, but you cant gas them. I understand the humanitarian problem there, but as a military maybe 1,000, maybe 3,000 and all the other millions who are refugees. So The Bottom Line is the same. This is not going to solve the fund amt al problem. Assad is going to remain in power. This is not an attempt to engage in regime change. If it deters him from using chemical weapons again, then for All Intents And Purposes the president achieved the goals of what the limited strike is about. You know, ambassador, as ive been thinking through this conflict and what our approach should be, i keep thinking about something that Lawrence Wright wrote. He talks about how in 1983 hezbollah bombed our barracks in lebanon, in beirut, and killed 2841 of our marines. Reagan made the decision to pull our troops out of lebanon. Meanwhile, Osama Bin Laden was watching these events unfold and essentially learned the lesson that america was cowardly, that they couldnt take a punch in the nose and that emboldened him to later on launch the attacks that we know he launched. I keep coming back to that because to me it seems like we have to figure out what type of strikes, what targets to strike. But isnt The Bottom Line here that the president said we have this red line of chemical weapons and if you cross that there will be enormous consequences. If we fail to deliver those enormous consequences, we lose all of our credibility in the reason gone, we lose all of our ability to act as a deterrent. Iran is watching this and learning perhaps the same lessons that Osama Bin Laden learned in 1983. Krystal, the fact is International Law was violated. The president s statement of crossing the red line occurred six to eight months ago. Syrias used chemical weapons some months ago. That was played out on america. The lesson was you dont go in the first place. We essentially intervened in a civil war in lebanon, the role then by intervening, the limited role that was designed expanded and it resulted in hundreds of americans being killed. The president with bipartisan support saying weve got to bring these troops home before this gets worse. I think theres a parallel that makes people nervous. Yeah, we say this is going to be limited but are we going to get sucked into something bigger here . The fact of the matter is i am so against boots on the ground, so against us involving ourselves militarily in a conflict that is beyond our control to shape anymore. I am so against having us be in a situation where we repeat the same mistakes of the past. What this white house wants to do is in effect almost a libya type conflict. Sanitized conflict. The white house seems to be

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