the congress wasn't behind him. i think he felt the need at that point to try to strengthen his hand and in doing so, he went to the congress to try to make sure that we as a nation could be seen as speaking with some sense of consensus on this. whether congress will join him or not remains to be seen. he's got to make his case and will do so tuesday night when he speaks to the nation and will continue to lobby hard for congressional support. >> thank you, sir. we appreciate that. we'll have much, much more. it is the top of the hour. you're in the "cnn newsroom." i'm don lemon following breaking news. you have to know that what we're about to show is something that's very difficult, it's very graphic. it's imaging that you might find really disturbing. especially for children. it's a series of video clips. some key lawmakers have seen

them, senators deciding whether to support president obama and a strike on syrian and to strike the syrian military forces. here's the video. it's young people, older people, even some babies, that's what you're seeing there. they are struggling to breathe. some are convulsing on a tile floor. some of them have already died. the videos were shot after a chemical weapons attack on august 21st. and members of senate who have seen them assured that they are authentic. we cannot confirm independently that the videos are authentic and they don't offer any proof as to who is responsible. but as our jake tapper reports, they could be very important to president obama's global call for a military strike on targets in syria. >> reporter: cnn has obtained shocking video shown to the senate intelligence committee on thursday, videos which show what

the intelligence community describes as victims of a sarin gas attack. and we should warn viewers that the videos are quite disturbing. in a classified briefing on thursday, members of the senate intelligence committee were shown these 13 video clips by the intelligence community, stunning videos, upsetting, showing what the intelligence community say are verified, authentic clips of a sarin gas attack in syria. suffering children, convulsing adults and what look to be corpses. the obama strags, struggling to build support for limited strikes against the assad regime, put the dvd together at the request of senator dianne feinstein. >> i asked that a dvd be prepared that have specific

instances of evidence, largely victims, and what we see means. and it's horrendous. so we are having that dvd multiplied. and we're going to get it out to every member of the senate and possibly members of the house. >> reporter: the senators were told that there were multiple reasons the intelligence community believe the clips to be authentic. they were shot from multiple angles. the outdoor footage matched overhead imageries. corroborated by survivors. so far, only members and staff of the senate intelligence committee have seen this video. the house is expected to see the clips next week, perhaps in a classified briefing monday led by secretary of state john kerry, secretary of defense chuck hagel and dr. susan rice. though some in the videos can be heard blaming the assad regime, these videos do not prove the assad regime carried out these chemical weapons attacks, those claims by president obama and others in the administration come from other information not shared with the public and not confirmed by cnn.

and while the president is confident in his case to the public, he says he recognizes why some, even after viewing these images, still have questions. >> i think people are rightly going to be pretty skeptical about the system and whether it can work to protect those children that we saw on those videos. and sometimes the further we get from the horrors of that, the easier it is to rationalize not making tough choices. >> reporter: these upsetting videos are being used to convince a skeptical congress that military action is needed against assad and his regime. however horrific the images are, they do not prove or disprove that a military strike would not result in any even more horror. jake tapper, cnn, washington. >> jake, thank you very much. president obama will give a few interviews on monday and he will sit down with cnn's wolf blitzer. you'll see it right here monday, 6:00 p.m. eastern only on cnn.

brian todd with me now from washington. brian, intelligence complete senators have seen these clips. president obama sits down for an interview with wolf on monday. how much stronger is the president's case for strikes now that these videos are out there? >> reporter: you can only imagine it's getting stronger. and dianne feinstein makes a good case for all this. but, remember, just about every member of the house has not seen the videos yet. some members of the senate who have seen some of this evidence are still not supporting air-strikes. you have to bear all that in mind. we've been speaking with chemical weapons experts about these videos, about the reactions of these victims and some of the telltale signs they're showing here. what the experts tell us is the characteristics of these victims are very consistent with a sarin gas attack. it's important to note, according to experts we spoke with, including a former u.n. weapons inspector, sarin gas does not burn the skin. 9 you don't see skin burns on

these victims in these videos. sarin kills you by breaking down your nerves. then you suffocate. as for these other visual signs, they are very consistent with signs. a chemical weapons expert from the center for nonproliferation studies says if you don't have a gas mask on when an attack occurs, within minutes your body will begin to shut down. the things you see in these videos, the twitching, convulsing, difficulty with vision and foaming at the mouth, all consistent with sarin. if you don't have a gas mask on and you are exposed to a concentrated amount of sarin, here's a quote, your body will short-circuit, you will die within minutes. don? >> because of this, is this why they are so confident -- is this what makes them so confident about the type of chemical weapons used? >> reporter: that's part of it. but you have to also understand how they test for sarin and how they can be very confident in the samples that they take. experts say that these u.n.

inspectors who were there can take blood and hair samples, brain tissue samples from deceased victims and run them through a device called a gas chromatography machine. even if that area of damascus was decimated by syrian army shelling right after the chemical attack, experts say it's not degraded to the point where you can't get an accurate test. they can grab samples from walls. they may not be prevented from getting an accurate sample. >> appreciate your reporting. secretary of state john kerry making the case for action abroad. cnn's elyse labott traveling with him.

>> reporter: today, secretary kerry in lithuania met with all 27 ministers of the european union and he called for clear and strong action against the assad regime. they blamed him for the use of chemical weapons. but they want to wait for that u.n. inspector's report before any military action. it's all about european politics. we have our politics in washington. the europeans have politics. a lot of public is very sketchy about any type of military action with any kind of u.n. backing. so you have france, the one country that said it would support and contribute to military action. he wants other european nations to side with him. they said to him, if you want our support, we want to wait for that u.n. inspections report. we want the u.n. to back us on that. that's the kind of horse trading going on in capitals right now,

don. >> elyse, we shouldn't underestimate the irony that a president who's won the nobel peace prize and one that came into office because he was against the wars in iraq and afghanistan, it's interesting that he is pushing to take military action against the country. it's obviously horrific, but there is some irony in that. i'm sure the president obviously is aware of that and spoke about it as he was at the g-20 last week. >> reporter: it's weighing on him. and don't forget, he got that nobel peace prize not for anything that he did but for the hope of things that he could do. and so now when he weighs whether to act or not to act, you see the u.s. making this very strong moral case. when you see these videos, when you talk about these people dying, children -- secretary kerry's been very emotional about children lying there, dying in their beds, with their

families, the u.s. making a strong moral case not that you have to send a message to assad that he can't use chemical weapons but that the world needs to act to make sure that these international crimes against humanity, these war crimes, cannot be taken again. >> elyse labott, thank you very much. i want to go back overseas to beirut. nic robertson is there live. these videos are horrific, no doubt. what impact they likely have on people who have doubts about what's happening in syria, specifically the international community? do they change anything at all? nic, we're having a bit of trouble hearing from you. we'll get back to our nic robertson. having a little trouble with his audio there. i want to bring in my panel

quickly here. nick payton-walsh, lieutenant colonel rick francona. right to you, rick, you made the case about why you believe two specific cities were hit by these attacks. what's your analysis of that? >> if you look at the status of forces -- the way they're laid out in damascus right now, there's a highway called the southern beltway. it divides the regime from the opposition forces. it goes along the eastern edge of the city. right inside the city is the square which many believe is the key. if the rebels can get to the square, they might be able to take the city. right there, ein tar ma and zamalka are on the on the rebel side of the highway.

while you can kill a lot of people with bombs and artillery shells and rockets, the chemicals kill everybody and it pushes everybody away from that line. these weren't random attacks. they were planned and put there for a reason. >> stand by, lieutenant. nick, i want to bring you in here. as we've been talking about this and it's a question i've been posing here -- because the videos have been out there on youtube. they just haven't been in one specific place, collected in one specific place and shown to a worldwide audience as it's been shown here on cnn. many people are saying this is propaganda, these videos have been out there. there are even more horrendous videos that we haven't seen. why all of a sudden this? the white house is now pushing to try to get the american people and other people over on their side, thus releasing these videos. what do you say to that? >> this is certainly part of a case they're making in the next

48 hours, barack obama's interviews part of that. these are verified, they say, from the ground, part of a multitude that have been out there on social media. but there's a mixed message in some way. this is about reminding americans about the moral outrage they should feel. but these videos, there's been much more horrific stuff over the last two years coming out of syria. children flattened by rubble on a regular basis. that red line is about the use of chemical weapons. the white house trying to play both sides here, make people feel furious about what's happening inside syria but the strength and rational for acting now is because chemical weapons were used. >> what's going on here? >> i think that the moral outrage over these chemical weapons attacks may already be spent. that's part of the problem with the delay. if you really were going to capitalize on this weapons attacks, you had to do it and you had to do it quickly.

at any rate, these videos that we see, to those convinced that bashar is a war criminal, no further proof is needed. to those who are not convinced, no proof is adequate. i just was walking down the street and two very educated people said, it's not possible that bashar al assad would use these chemical weapons. he's way too smart. these must have been used by the opposition. we can try this case ad nauseam. we have to be convinced what we are doing. i'm convinced this man was used these chemical weapons. and i'm convinced that there was so much before. and i'm convinced as we've argued here that the use of air power by bashar al assad wou would -- for 2 1/2 years, we allowed him to do his killing. and now we try to awaken moral outrage which is not there. >> my panel is going to be with me throughout the entire hour. next, we'll talk with a

member of congress who says we should not be launching any type of attack against syria. and just ahead, the fbi recently warned of attacks over the internet with a group aligned with the assad regime. sooip terr cyberterrorism, what might be at risk.

on monday, president barack obama will sit down with cnn's wolf blitzer. you'll see it right here on cnn, monday night, 6:00 p.m. eastern. president obama is running out of time to shift public opinion

on syria. congress comes back monday and the president will address the nation on tuesday night. the first procedural vote in the season could happen as soon as wednesday. democrats like janice hahn are usually in president obama's corner but not on syria. as of right now, the congresswoman is still opposed to u.s. military action in syria. are you after seeing that video? >> you know, that video was horrible. all these images of children gasping for breath after having been exposed to chemical weapons are horrible. look, i'm a mom, i'm a grandmother. no one likes to see those. but many of my constituents are saying, congresswoman hahn, war is terrible, this is a civil war. and death is death. and still people come up to me all the time and are not sure why america has to be the enforcer of this international

norm that has been violated. if in fact 188 countries have signed onto this chemical weapons convention, where are they on this? and is there another way to hold assad accountable for this violation, short of bombing his country, whereby the united states would be responsible for collateral damage, which could be more people being killed? >> you're still against a military strike, correct? >> i am at this point. i cannot vote in favor of authorizing the president to use military force. i don't believe all avenues have been explored. maybe if my constituents had their minds changed -- i'm in the house of representatives. i vote like my district wants me to vote. if the president can make the case on tuesday night and my constituents overwhelmingly call my office, e-mail me and urge me

to vote yes, maybe i'll change my mind. but right now, that's not the case here in los angeles. >> even if there's a moral imperative which has been -- those are words that have been thrown around a lot. there's a moral imperative that something be done with the assad regime for using chemical weapons, even with that, it doesn't change your mind? >> i think the question is, is a response warranted? do we have a moral obligation to answer this? but in what way are we going to answer this? is there still an opportunity for the united nations to take it up, hear all the evidence themselves and have these countries stand up and say yes or no whether they believe this norm has been violated and what the response should be? i just am one of those that feels it is so unpredictable over there. and we do not know after our first strike what happens next, whether or not the assad regime would retaliate against us,

against our ally israel. there's too much uncertainty in this military strike response that i think some other avenues should be explored first. >> congresswoman, i want to read this statement to you. it's from retired general david petraeus. he says, i strongly support congressional approval at president obama's request for authority to undertake military action against the syrian regime of bashar al assad. such action is necessary in order to deter future use of chemical weapons in syria and to degrade the regime's overall military capabilities. failure of congress to approve the president's request would have serious ramifications not just in the mideast but around the world. what do you say to general david petraeus' statement? >> i thank him for his service and certainly he has a lot more experience in military strategy than i do. but i just will tell you that in no way are we guaranteed that

this military strike will, in fact, deter any further use of chemical weapons. the resolution we're asked to vote on actually talks about the first 60 days and then a 30-day extension and an opportunity if chemical weapons are used again for us to respond. so i don't think it's 100% guaranteed that this will necessarily guarantee that chemical weapons will never be used again. >> so if -- you said if he uses chemical weapons again. if something does happen after this -- because the president has now put the ball really in congress' court, right? if something happens, will you and members of congress who voted against it -- this is just a question. i'm not on either side here. will you feel responsible for that? >> again, absolutely not. this is an international norm that has apparently been crossed.

there are many more countries who also signed onto this convention, to this agreement that chemical weapons are not to be used. so president obama has even said it's not his red line. it's the international community's red line. but i do think he should be held responsible. i do think there should be some international outrage. but is bombing their country the only way we send a message to this guy that he's crossed the line? i don't think so. and i think america could use our moral leadership and could use our greatness and could use our diplomacy to bring the international community together on taking another course of action to hold assad accountable for these atrocities. >> congresswoman janice hahn of california, thank you very much for your time. we appreciate it. please come back and tell us

when you get an update what you think and after the president speaks. we'd love to have you back here on cnn. >> thank you. i take this decision very seriously. >> absolutely. thank you again, congresswoman. the government is warning americans about attacks over the internet. hackers aligned with the assad regime might be targeting infrastructure here in the u.s. what might be at risk? that's next. too big. too small. too soft. too tasty. [ both laugh ] [ male announcer ] introducing progresso's new creamy alfredo soup.

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just a moment ago we spoke with california representative janice hahn and she made her case saying she can't side with the president to strike syria. i want to bring in my panel now to talk about this. nick paton walsh, i was watching this and she was basically saying she will do whatever her constituents say. if her constituents say, we

should do a military strike, she'll vote for it. if they say don't -- what do you make of that? >> there's a larger issue at stake here that the white house has been talking about, the authority of the commander in chief to choose military action as they see fit. and a member of his own party saying that her constituents contacting her have swayed her. 20 years ago after somalia how desperately reluctant anyone was to get involved. it's an incredibly key moment for the u.s. if you need a simple fact as to why perhaps it's the u.s.'s burden, the u.s. spends more on defense than any other countries all combined. >> let's get back to what she's saying, though. i have a feeling you're not sharing something with me. what is your general reaction, your initial reaction to what she's saying about -- >> she's potentially

jeopardizing the authority of a man who got her elected to her seat. if her constituents said, it's a good idea, that would change her opinion as well. i wonder if there's a broader issue at stake here. the white house talking about the need simply -- if the president stands up and says, i need to do this and appeals to the house to back him up. >> it was interesting the way she put it because usually -- as you have said, members of congress have a way of couching it -- she said, this is what my constituents want. this is what i'm doing. and before i get to the question, the leaders many times are in possession of information that we don't have, classified information. and if our leaders are in possession of that, they cannot share that with the public and the public will never know what the imperative is. >> to be honest with you, don, i think we have all the information that these people have. it's all out on the table. this drama, the tragedy, it

began in march 2011, 30 months into this crisis. we know all we need to know. but that interview is remarkable. you have a member of congress in a way admitting to a certain kind of moral and political abdication. it depends on the people calling her office. i'll tell you something about this story that is now dramatized. president obama for five years now in office has been a spokesman for a kind of isolationist view of the world, in a way minimizing the american burden in the world. all of a sudden here we are in september of 2013 and he's calling upon the american dream to boot up and go abroad for a mission that they don't believe in. >> but she was elected by the people to represent the people and their interests and their interests, they believe, is not to go to war. >> but members of congress, members of the house, members of the senate, they're also called upon to have moral and political courage. they're called upon to make judgments. as nick said, they're called

upon to make judgments about the american burden abroad. do we have a burden abroad to help in situations of distress. and alas, now as we look at the american mood today, it's very much liking. >> barack obama said the tide of war is receding and now he's saying it's coming ashore again. >> okay. we'll continue with our panel in just a bit. there's another threat here. the u.s. taking foreign attacks over the internet very seriously. the fbi has added the syrian electronic army to its list of wanted criminals. so what are they worried about? our lori seeigall has more now. >> reporter: it's a cyber attack that could target our nation's infrastructure. >> we'd call this a pipe rupture

in this process. >> reporter: that pipe is filled with water but it could be filled with oil, even acid. >> when this valve is closed, we should turn off this pump. >> reporter: that didn't happen because these energy researchers were able to hack the controller. >> as an operator, you are completely locked out. >> reporter: it's the same kind used at oil and gas facilities. this hack could cause gas pipes and water tanks to explode or overflow and could represent modern-day warfare, infiltrating the code that makes it run. >> you can cripple an entire country by attacking infrastructure. >> reporter: if there's a conflict with syria, damascus could respond from cyberspace. >> they have big allies with decent capabilities, such as iran and russia. they're definitely capable of launching some sort of cyber capability towards us in the united states. >> reporter: with this hack,

researchers from security consultancy firm took control of signals to change what an operator sees, to highlight the vulnerabilities, they recently presented their findings publicly. >> as this thing is filling, we can make it look to the operator that our process is actually lowering. >> reporter: hackers could do it because the unit is connected to the internet with a public i.p. address. so are other parts of america's infrastructure that are remotely controlled, like trains and water towers. >> they don't have these security controls in place. >> reporter: how does this manifest itself into the lives of everyday people? >> it could mean that a train runs off the tracks and causes a huge accident. there's lots of unpredictable things that could happen because these systems are in a lot of different areas and a lot of different industries. >> reporter: and the united states is already on the defensive after a group calling itself the syrian electronic army took responsibility for disrupting web traffic on major

news sites like "the new york times." >> no one's going to be able to challenge the military from a pure boots on ground or straight warfare-to-warfare type situation. but what countries can do is impact us from more of an information side of the house, what we do electronically. >> reporter: and i should mention none of this is a surprise to washington. the department of homeland security and the pentagon have committed billions of dollars to commit to fighting cyber terrorism. and a hacker claiming he's a leader in the syrian electronic army told me they've already tested out these types of infrastructure hacks in other countries. pretty scary stuff. don? >> lori, thank you very much for that. in a moment, we'll go a lot deep on this particular subject. and next, we'll get a look from the inside. my guest is a former member of the national security agency. so how real are these threats? that's next. ur price" tool? i guess you can tell them how much you want to pay and it gives you a range of options to choose from. huh? i'm looking at it right now.

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i want to bring in now joel brenner. let's talk about these hackers. is the internet actually a target? >> the internet is a target. but it would be better to say the internet is a highway through which lots of things can be targeted. the internet is a porous way of communicating. our public is now figuring out that privacy on the internet is more or less nonexistent and not

because people are evil but because it's an utterly porous way to communicate. there's no way to know for sure who you're talking to and no way to make sure that person isn't taking things from your system. you can penetrate the network to put bad things into it or to corrupt the information on it or to shut it down completely. that nice lead-in piece that you had isn't the first time this has been demonstrated. more than ten years ago, back in the '90s in australia, a disgruntled guy who didn't get a job he wanted went around opening and closing valves with his laptop on a local water supply and sewage system. and the result was that sewage spewed into the water supply and it caused untold and nasty sorts of damage.

we did another experiment -- our government did -- showing that you could blow up a diesel electric generator with a keyboard and a mouse. and then we had the attacks on the russian centrifuges, physically destroyed them. and a year ago, we saw attacks coming out of iran on a huge oil company in saudi arabia. the attackers actually destroyed all the information, wiped clean 30,000 computers and rendered those computers junk. since then, we've seen the iranian attacks on our banking system causing chaos and costing tens of millions of dollars a month to fend off. now, what's particularly troublesome here, don, is that to do this, you don't need fabulous sums of money that only governments can afford. you need knowledge.

you need expertise. and knowledge, like water, levels out over time. so we're going to see more and more groups like the syrian electronic army getting shrewder at this stuff. there are people out there who want to do us harm. >> you mentioned a number of different instances where the internet has been used by hackers. and then there's one just this week that hackers targeted, the recruiting website for the u.s. marin marines, replacing it with messages trying to convince the u.s. not to take military action in syria. does taking down a military website mine a high-value attack for this group? >> no. that's a nuisance attack. i don't want to say it's childish or it's not true but it's not a really sophisticated attack. a sophisticated attack doesn't just get into somebody's website but they get into what are called industrial control syste systems. these are the systems that run the switches on amtrak or the

subway underneath new york city where you are or the air traffic control system at our airports or that run our power grid. that's what we're really scared about. and i should add, the banking system, the accounts. if you were to wipe out the accounts at a large bank or two, the economic damage would dwarf that of 9/11. >> joel brenner, thank you for joining us here on cnn. we appreciate that. >> you're welcome. at town halls across the country, americans told their representatives sometimes loudly why we should or shouldn't be getting involved in syria. you're going to hear what they had to say next. >> we're worse off than we started.

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on monday, president barack obama will sit down with cnn's wolf blitzer. of course you'll see that right here, monday night, 6:00 p.m. eastern, "the situation room." they say all politics is local. with congress expected to vote on syria this week, some politicians used the end of the recess to make the case for a military strike. but opinion is sharply divided as several lawmakers saw firsthand at town halls. >> if we shoot a, quote, shot over the bow and aren't willing to finish the battle, we're worse off than we started. >> i say we bail out of everybody and say, you guys are on your own. >> this debate will matter. and so because it will matter, what you have to say matters. >> this is not just the first red line that we have drawn that he has crossed. he's been crossing red lines for 2 1/2 years. >> i think there has to be a response to assad and the use of

chemical weapons. i just don't think it should be the united states always alone and unilaterally. >> i just don't believe that the united states should go in. >> the people of connecticut should be very much concerned about the use of chemical warfare. >> i am unopposed to having a single american boot on the ground in syria -- >> [ inaudible ]. >> i just said at the beginning of my remarks that we will respect everyone's view -- >> you don't respect our view. we sent you to stop the war. >> we have to get rid of whoever did this crime. this is a crime against humanity. >> why are you not listening to the people and staying out of syria? it's not our fight. >> wow. people are really fired up about this. and even if you ask a question on television, people read things into it.

that's how strong the feelings are about this. so we've been hearing from the left and from the right. what about the moderate middle? we're going to hear from them right after this break.

so as we look toward this coming week's high drama, washington debate over syria, political moderates outside the nation's capitol are watching very closely as the usual left versus right political alliances fall apart. joe, good to have you back on

the show. i remember during the 2008 election and everything that went with it, we had a group of moderates that came on, and you were one of them. very strong voice. you recently posted your frustration with some republicans, writing that republicans simply can't argue a case without making it personal and making it all boil to hatred of barack obama. are there examples of that? >> oh, quite a few examples of that. you almost run out of space making up a list these days. i mean, what you're seeing, first of all, i did a piece this week about how you're getting the liberal democrats and republican isolationists, and now also the tea party republicans, all converging on opposing this. the republicans who have started to have to make it all about obama personally, you've got peggy noonan writes a column and says that obama doesn't look like a war president. harry truman looked like a war president. you've got charles kroutenhammer

says he's leaning against going in because obama doesn't know what he's talking about. and then senator jeff sessions says if george bush warned assad, assad wouldn't have used chemical weapons. there's so many things coming out about obama and the obama derangement syndrome by groups on the right. >> as an independent, what do you think about how so many groups seem to be opposing. and people said, you know, are you pushing to go to war, don? it's just a question. so what do you -- what do you make of so many democrats being against the president? >> well, first of all, our whole political style now is when somebody asks you a question you don't like or advocates something that you don't agree, you go after them or imply that there's something about the way they're asking it. that's our whole 21st century political style. secondly, i'm really not surprised with the democrats, because if you look at history,

the democrats have had a way of of sort of breaking away with their own party, on more issues in particular. also to the point where it may jettison their whole agenda. i'm a little more in shock over what's happening with the republicans. if you look at the gallup poll, the republicans against this almost match the liberals against it. and it's -- the group that is most divided -- least divided with the margin between, is the moderate group. so, i'm not really surprised too much with the democrats, but i'm surprised that they would -- what i'm surprised about the democrats with is, first of all, if this is defeated, it's going to pretty much jettison the rest of obama's term. and you also have to ask about what's going to happen with iran, what's iran going to do as far as a nuclear weapons. what will north korea want to do? what's going to happen with chemical weapons being used elsewhere. there's the moral issues, the geopolitical issues, and then there's the other issue, which is, what's going to happen with the democratic party, because

pretty much, they're going to be selling off their president, letting him float off to see. i'm not surprised as much by the democrats as i am by what's happening with the republican party right now. >> thank you very much for that, joe, we appreciate you giving us a moderate voice here on cnn. and after this break, i'm going to talk to the panel about what they think of that, and also this, a very influential voice calling for no military strike in syria. we're going to hear what pope francis had to say and talk that over, next, as well.

let's get you some video now. this is from the vatican where a prayer vigil led by pope francis just wrapped up, just a short time ago, and it was talking about the violence in syria. tens of thousands gathered to pray for peace. smaller events were held in venues of worship around the world. and of course the pope has a twitter account where he wrote, all men and women of goodwill are bound by the task of pursuing peace. i want to bring my panel back in right now and get straight to lieutenant colonel rick francona. lieutenant colonel, you heard

from the pope there. people praying for peace. there are many voices of opposition. you heard the congresswoman from california saying, hey, my, c don't want that. >> you could settle it through prayer, through some international forum. but having lived in syria, knowing assad, this won't work. the only thing that's going to deter bashar al assad from deploying chemical weapons is some kind of strike. >> thank you very much. unfortunately, we're out of time. i want to thank all of my guests here for joining us throughout the hour here on cnn. we're going to be back a little bit later on with an update. but for now, that's it. tune in on monday night, where cnn's wolf blitzer will be speaking to the president. i'm don lemon. good night. ved my mother-in-law your chicken noodle soup but she loved it so much... i told her it was homemade.

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