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What is discussed behind closed doors there. we also have word that the president will be sitting down with his secretary of defense, james mattis, to discuss, that will be tonight, to discuss a potential response, a potential military response to the situation in syria. gabe gutierrez, our own gabe gutierrez standing by outside mar-a-lago in florida. do we know anything more about the discussion between the president and matt is and looming? >> reporter: hi, steve, good afternoon. a highly anticipated meeting. defense secretary mattis expected to brief the president later on this evening at m...

In direct combat. i think we try and avoid that. however, there are always unknown actions that come out of using military power. so if you just politically signaling you're signaling you're angry about something, what happens to the revolutionary guards in iran go after u.s. forces in syria or in iraq? what happens if they put hezbollah up to the israelis? so again, we ought to sit down and say what are we trying to achieve? what are our objectives? and if it is just political signaling, we don't like to see children being killed by chemical weapons. we need to rethink that. >> the idea of co...

The scope of his power, anything lightning th like that? this would be in terms of the goal of the operation, this would specifically -- this would be a success if there are n more chemical attacks even if he stayses s in power is that fair to say? >> i think from a military and international legal perspective, yes, the answer to the question is, yes. in other words, we would conduct the strike, do the proportional response, warn the offending party and then stop, reassess the situation. however, if you want my opinion, we have now seen a pattern of behavior from assad going back a decade and ...

There's going to be an option discussion about regime change. what i think is a lot more likely is going to be a proportionate response directed against the lmts of syrian power that conducted the strike. that means the air force, potentially chemical production facility if we can target that. i think this will be more in the nature of a demonstration, a proportional response with a concurrent warning, obviously to syria, but also to russia. saying that your client, assad, is deeply in violation of international law and, therefore, we will reserve the right to continue to ratchet up the scale ...

Welcome? >> well, first of all, i think what we're seeing very much so as the others have said, very much a work in progress. i mean, donald trump's positis as you pointed out back in 2013 about whatever president obama was doing in syria where we ought to stay the hell out of there, let them kind of resolve. just two days ago, remember, sean spicer told us at the white house it was a position of this administration that bashar al assad should stay in power. then comes the chemical attack. i was in the rose garden yesterday when it was very clear that president trump was terrifically, hardly b...