distinctions. i would echo ambassador ford's statement about we have a choice here. either we flood the zone and really try to back these forces and by the more and do the fighting that needs to be done, or we try to go into this piecemeal. i hope we do not do that. i hope we do something more comprehensive. i think this report will help inform that strategy as it eve -- as it evolves. i was just in the golan heights, and i had the opportunity to visit and watch what could only be described as sectarian armageddon. the assad regime, has below-backed forces, and a whole host of others, battling against a plethora of opposition groups in southern syria, and they were not pulling any punches. it was like being in the middle of a storm, and it has been going on for weeks.

the other day, when the fighters captured soldiers and held them for ransom, they had been released as of yesterday, and that's a step in the right direction, but that does not mean the war ends. allies in the region, i think we should not be surprised. our allies in the region are hesitant. they need to see it fleshed out and what's in it for their security and for their interests. i think we are on the road to that. the smart place to start here is to move from a title 50 program to a title x, which is a covert program, which is before congress now. to say we do not know anything about these groups is inaccurate. they have embedded for years. that's the reason president obama makes the decisions he does. that's the reason they are extremely difficult decisions, but we need to start with this title x program, the eight or so groups that we back, and i think

that's what we are going to do. our goal should be to qualitatively and quantitatively groups vis-à-vis jihadists in general in syria. second, assad is not the answer. at best, he is a container along with the iranians east and west of the isis outbreak. there are a lot of reasons for that. ambassador ford outlined them. most important like, to anybody who follows this, they just have limited capacity -- most importantly to anyone who follows this. the chief proponent of this is ambassador crocker, who i respect very much, but i think in all fairness, i do not think that the regime he was ambassador to years ago before ambassador ford was -- that regime no longer exists. it's constructed to early in differently in

terms of personnel. the constellation of forces, the assad regime's army has undergone the offensive and only does when it is backed up by the national defense forces, the shia militias that are backed by the iranian quds force. very difficult situation. third, i urge americans in trying to square defeating isis and confronting the assad regime -- teed things that seem almost incompatible at the same time -- these things only seem compatible if you use the math -- map of syria that we have now besides the co-boundaries. those have not existed for some time. they do legally, and not saying that this country should not exist into the future, but -- i wrote about this a couple of years ago -- the country that i lived in for so many years, the one i have been discussing things with -- it no longer exists. it has been divided and partitioned for well over two years, and we have to deal with that reality.

whatever assistance we give to the moderate opposition to defeat isis would carve out a zone of influence within that , and sunnis are the majority inside of syria, and it is there that president obama has outlined the important thing is to harness sunni aspirations going forward as part of any kind of settlement. bashar al-assad and his regime are struggling in the west as well as kurds in the northeast. i think this will continue, and hopefully, at the end of the process went isis is defeated, those different parties can negotiate. and last but not least, i would urge you to be patient. what is required right now is assertiveness, not aggression, and not acting in haste. we need to think this through. assertion is different than aggression, but most importantly, i think the policies of the last few years have shown us that if we keep the rest of the world at arms length, sometimes the situation does not get better. we are not the problem in this. we are part of the answer, and

we need to do whatever the answer is and do it in an intelligent way. >> last but not least, i want to turn to doug. we were on a panel over with our friends at the american enterprise institute, and this isis blitzkrieg into iraq. if i recall the discussion, we were talking about how surprisingly good the iraqi elections were. everything was looking pretty good. what we wanted to do here -- we wanted to look at this as an integrated problem set. i think this summer was a wake-up call for the world, for this administration. if i'm correct, this administration i think is doing a better job how it looks at these challenges, both iraq and syria, together. i think there's a different process that's going on right now, and i think that's a good thing. so, doug i thought maybe you , could give us some thoughts on

how you see primarily the pathway forward on iraq a cousin think everyone assumes, given how difficult syria is, and i think we all agree it's probably the weakest leg in that three-leg stool, there still are challenges ahead for iraq. >> [inaudible] thank you for organizing this, and always great to see you, ambassador. i have been working in iraq on exclusively for 10 years now. iraq kind of hijacked my life in 2000 or and has never given it back. this is not something i get to do very often. so let's talk first about iraq and briefly, the military actions we expect to see. once upon a time, i was a military planner and strategist and spent a long time doing that.

our watchword was always you're are never going to build a plan that is going to work. you want to build a plan that could work. that's always the best you can hope for in a war, in a military operation, in a world where there is fog and friction in the unexpected and no unknowns and unknown unknowns. you want to build a plan that could plausibly work if things go your way. i think that's where the president is. he has a plan that could plausibly work. not to say they're a not all types of difficulties, all types of hazards, all types of ways in which this could be terribly wrong, but this is a plan that could work. that said, it's going to the and -- it is going to be an interesting plan as it unfolds. i was on television the other day, and a phrase i wish i could

come up with but did not was when he said we should expect to see in iraq a coalition of the weird. which i think is going to be exactly right. i think the administration probably rightly sees as proof of visible operations. what we see is an unusual menagerie of allies. as best as i can piece together, the information from the north of iraq, and like in syria, information is hard to get and is contradictory, but as best as we can tell, the operation at sinjar mountain seems to have been done on most exclusively by the turkish-based terrorist group, which is on our state department foreign terrorist organization list. they are a known terrorist group. for a long time, we have helped the turks deal with that terrorist group. on the other hand, they are the ones that largely in conjunction

with u.s. air power broke the siege. it appears that this operation was conducted primarily by iraqi shia militias, with home we have a very storied past. the latest transmutation of the satirist, with advisers if not shock troops, again, in conjunction with u.s. air power. this could very well be an interesting coalition as we move forward. i love the phrase that ambassador ford used. this is going to be done out of tactical necessity, not ideological affinity. that may well be our watchword as we move forward and see these various groups start to work together in different ways. at the same time, we have to be aware that while there's tactical necessity, we need to

be very, very aware of the politics. there's going to be political and military tension constantly as we work through this. in a world where there were no political considerations, the fight against isis would be easy. we would grab the military force from the syrian regime, and from the iranian regime. we would ally with them, and then we would all come together and annihilate isis. militarily, that makes absolute perfect sense. obviously, politically, that can't happen and there is a lot of difficulty. the tension between what militarily makes the most sense and what is politically feasible in the long term. if i can turn a little bit across the syrian border were i

do not have near the experience as my friends here, but i have watched a bit -- it appears to me we will have some very similar issues as we move forward, which all of our panelists here have alluded to. ambassador ford is absolutely right that the moderate syrians, the free syrian army, are there. they are not going away. they are not going to be wiped out. at the same time, they are not militaryowerful force on the ground in syria, and most of their action against the islamic state consists of defense of operation, keeping isis from overrunning their town. they are strongest in defending their own territory. units that defend a town and keep isis from coming in. that's not nothing, and we are grateful they are doing that, but they do not have the force, the military power to pick up and go attack isis. even in conjunction with u.s.

air power, it's not clear to me that the free syrian army has even the power to just go occupy that. so how are we going to get them to be a plausible partner? by investing -- a friend of mine is indogenous. we -- they are getting a lot of resources having a lot of success, therefore they are getting a lot more recruits right now. i will come back to that. we are going to have to turn that equation on for the free syrian army. but we also need to have eyes wide open about what that means. what we are going to try to do is get groups, small bands, that have been affiliated with our syrian taliban islamic front,

and/or perhaps even al nusra to join the free syrian army. this is a variation on a theme to what we saw in 2006 and iraq in what we called the sunni awakening, much of which i think has been mythologized, but nonetheless, it happened, and we did see iraqi sunnis who were fighting against us, in whom in some cases were at least very closely aligned with if not actually part of al qaeda and iraq, came over and joined the other side. we're going to have to be eyes wide open about that is exactly what we are talking with. as a nation, as a country, are we comfortable with these former al nusra and islamic front fighters coming over, joining us, being trained by us either in a covert manner or perhaps even overtly under title 10 -- are we ok with this?

i suspect if we were to do a strict application of the leahy amendment, there would be problems with this. we are just getting an understanding of what moves forward and how we are going to move on. the other point that the ambassador made that i want to follow-up on -- he made the very clear point that attacking isis is not the free syrian army's first priority. they are first and foremost concerned about the syrian regime -- that's absolutely true, but i think that point also needs to be expanded with perhaps the notable exception of shia leaders in baghdad. i'm not sure fighting isis is anybody's first priority in the region. we also need to be eyes wide open about that. but kurds are willing to fight isis. however, prior to the kurds taking their left hook from

urbil, we hadnto some very open statements from the leadership that this was not their problem and not their fight. they have their own agenda, their own things they are concerned about. clearly, the iraqi sunnis who have been willing to give at least some semblance of aid and comfort to isis, as they at least initially moved in, saw a isis as a preferred option to the central government. following me yesterday, it is still clear to me that these countries see isis as a greater threat. isis is an enemy to everyone, but it's not clear it is the first-tier enemy to everyone. we are going to initiate the

military campaign against isis and iraq, and that is the right thing to do. if you have someone who is bleeding, the first thing to do is stop the bleeding to use a medical metaphor. in this case, this region is bleeding from the isis invasion, and that needs to be stopped. the president is doing the right thing to address it. there are root causes that are not going to be impacted by f-16s. we have a serious issue with salafist ideology in the region. that's not to say that all solid -- that all salafists are violent, but the dusting to be a

correlation. this is not a region in which any of the regimes are particularly laudable. even the most decent regimes in the region still have significant shortcomings in their dedication to democratic governance, human rights, liberalism, is that we hold dear. this authoritarian regime that keep people from freely expressing themselves i think does give rise to finding an alternative means to express their discontent with the region, turning to isis and similarly violent groups. finally, lack of economic opportunities for the youth in the region. so long as a young 15-year-old man in north africa or in the gulf sees no future, no job, no economic prospects, no possibility of marriage, no ability to raise a family, the

ideological heal of a group it's willing to give him a home, a cause, and through violence 11 to achieve things he could not otherwise get will continue to be a very serious problem in the region. >> thank you. before i open it up to some questions, i want to open it up -- i want to ask one. what do you all see as the biggest challenge in terms of u.s. policy implementation. i would like to start with ambassador ford and doug because you two have the most experience and senior level experience in u.s. government and how it works. when i saw the president's speech the other night and some of us were in meetings and getting pre-briefings, i want to believe it. i wrote a piece saying that it's the most compelling strategy one could come up with, but i also felt like i have seen this movie before with the obama administration, that it outlines a very good speech, and then,

you know, the next act is that everybody reacts on cnn and panels and everybody is tweeting about it while the speech is going on, and there's a little bit of a debate on the hill. then the buzz fades, and the policy implementation actually proceeds. i suppose that this will not be the case. this will be in the spotlight for a while, but when it comes to implementation, anything has had challenges in implementing its stated goal. my view is that this policy is probably the best a can come up with in a worst situation, the only game in town, but at the same time, executing and implementing is a big challenge. knowing what we know, you all seem generally where i'm at. this seems like a decent strategy, but i have to say, i am skeptical because there are so many pitfalls that can happen.

what might we do wrong that we have done before based on your experience? ambassador ford? >> it will be very hard to do this and iraq. iraq.his in your points are spot on. the irony of us tactically cooperating after all the americans they have killed is something. just to narrow that down, on the diplomatic track, which kind of leads out to me -- i think about john kerry visiting turkey today -- how hard it will be to secure turkish support on a variety of levels, and the turks have -- they are in kind of a tough spot. i think they have 48 or 49 of

their diplomatic personnel are being held hostage i the islamic state right now. but turkey is essential. they are going to have to find a way to bring them into this and to be able to find a way to cooperate with them. that is on the diplomatic side. on the broader political side, and doug touched on this, and he is exactly right, the biggest problem in iraq and syria is that there is a very disgruntled sunni arab community, potent minority in iraq, a majority in syria. not saying that the solution is one broad solution, but the islamic state problem comes out

of that sunni arab community's dissatisfaction. we have to be sensitive to that. i was very struck today. the report out of reuters that when the shia militia went in, they killed a bunch of sunnis in retaliation. that's exactly the kind of thing that will set us back. so if the report is true -- and i do not know if it is or not -- but if it is true, i certainly hope the iraqi government moves to discipline those shia militias because otherwise, they will subvert the progress we are trying to make. then on the syrian side, again, we're going to have a lot of messy tactical alliances. are we going to be able to manage that? >> i think that's great, but again, how our government operates -- if you have any thoughts on this, i think the moderate opposition is probably one component. the so-called moderate opposition, but what do you see the biggest implementation

challenges in this package? >> i think the largest implementation challenges will be less in the executive branch and more on the hill. bringing forward title x assistance to these groups, whether we are talking about the kurds and care to any substate actor, the moderate resistance in syria is by a strict reading of our export control laws not permissible. that is a title 10 above the board rule. of course, congress could pass a one-sentence bill for the purposes of our export control regime that syrian moderates or krg will be treated as sovereign states, but it's hard to see that happening in the near term. nor do i think we are going to see any congressional action to go on record with the vote. this is not a partisan position. i don't think on either side of the aisle in either house of congress is anybody going to be really excited about a vote on

this plan because there are so many ways in which this could conceivably go wrong, and who wants to be on record for the vote on something that went wrong? on the executive side, it will simply be the implementation, having to work under the -- again, you hate to start quoting titles, but under the limitation that you cannot get an open, above the board assistance act. it has to go through people who are not limited by export control actions. this makes things very, very difficult. i think that is going to be our largest executive branch challenge moving forward. >> i agree with doug. title x assistance here is key. mostly because it gets everyone politically signed off for it. one of the constraints we've had in terms of policy -- u.s.

policy in particular -- is when you have a covert program, syrians cannot understand it because it is a secret program. a lot of times, they do not know the assistance they are receiving, and they also do not know who is training them. syrians are much smarter than i think many people give them credit for, so they might have figured it out, so that's going to be important to and wagenen ndwagoning forces going forward. i've been working on syrian policy with people in and around government including the ambassador for several years. over the last year, decision-making on this has been incredibly centralized. i would recommend -- when you were producing this report, there's a lot of good work on syria out there from open sources. there are no secrets in the syrian war. there is contradictory

information. sorting through it will require a collective effort, and i think if we do that, it will be easier to defeat isis and easier to sell it politically to the american people, and i think that is the smart way forward. >> i wonder whether or not to the level of coordination inside u.s. government can be helped by, for want of a better term, assigning responsibility and making somebody it for getting things done. we are beginning to see this on the military side. i wonder if something like this could help on the humanitarian peace, something we have not talked a lot about here, but the u.s. has put a tremendous amount of money and effort into humanitarian relief in the refugee crisis in the region around syria, but there are other countries in the region that could probably do a little bit more on this, and maintaining and galvanizing that

effort, i think having someone who is in charge of that be quite helpful. i wonder also how that would relate to the diplomatic piece of this we will have to maintain over time. >> i have seen the reports about john allen, a brilliant guy. i would just worry that if we start setting up a series of sort of equal structures or teams or something, much better to have it integrated into one team with one leader to whom all of these different drafts -- financial, political, diplomatic, military -- are all fused. the relationship between that team and departments here will have to be very clear. who does that team report to? and finally, i think andrew's point is right. it's very hard to run that kind of operation out of washington. one of the lessons i took out of being in iraq so long was that tactically, it is much better to devolve it down to the field. i'm not sure how that you

coordinate with embassies in places like baghdad and riyadh and ankara. that's the trick for responsibility to be laid out very clearly, not just in the administration but also to the congress and the public. >> one of the thing we just need to because doesn't of and to manage -- what we are talking about is revamping up the war. let's be candid about this. when we reramp up the war, the humanitarian crisis is going to metastasize. i'm not saying that's not the right policy or not the right thing to do. this reminds me of the 2007 surge -- to get casualties down, they had to go up first. we need to be prepared for that and mitigated as best we can, but we need to prepare ourselves and the american people for an increase in -- it's already a

catastrophe. i do not have a better word for the humanitarian situation in syria, but however bad it is now -- and it is terribly bad -- it's going to be worse as this war is essentially reenergized by us in order to empower the free syrian army to take the fight to isis, and that's going to be very painful to watch, i think. >> thanks for indulging me on that question. i know one that makes people's eyes glaze over if you are in the media, but when you are in government, it's essential to have this what are we doing in terms of implement thing and executing? what we found with some of our friends and set of government, one hand of say the state department not knowing what usaid or other agencies were actually doing and that lack of coordination even within the so-called smart power agencies, not bringing the pentagon or intelligence agencies into the

mix was enormously difficult and tightening up our game, and that seems like if we are going to be serious, if we are going to put our shoulder in, essential to do. the syrian opposition is the key focus of our report today. we have talked a bit about it. there's a lot of understandable concern about if congress approves it, and we talked a little bit about the leahy amendment and other things. how do we actually -- are there ways that we can put some sort of constraint or safeguard against this going terribly wrong? when anybody brings this up -- when anybody brings this up -- and again, understandably, they say look what happened to the $20 billion in the iraqi security forces. you were part of the surge and a key part of that. how do you answer what i think is a very smart question an important, of are there ways that we can safeguard, that these weapons, especially looking at images the summer, of u.s. supplied weapons in the hands of isis -- how do we actually -- you all are

advocates, and i guess we are, too, here in a sense. how do we make sure there are things in place, based on your experience -- are there practical things that can be done to safeguard against these weapons ultimately? it will not be perfect, as you are saying, but are there things you can put in the play? >> there are never guarantees and the stings 100%. we would be deceiving ourselves. however, if we had not backed various factions throughout the world, we would never have won any kind of proxy war. in that sense, that is where the president is very right. iranians are much better at fighting these proxy wars than we are. our arab allies also do not have a quds force, and we have talked about this a number of times, which is funny because this would be a fortunate time to have one, not that i am advocating that. but what the u.s. can do is work

with allies in the region to coordinate and not to be the quds force, but rather to coordinate the different agencies. i think in terms of from our side, particularly -- you know, training is one thing, and weapons are another, and this will be the real question -- what are the weapons that are provided to this force? will they remain relatively light weapons, or will they go into something more significant? it comes down to anti-aircraft weapons. at least that has been the major debate. it will might be the only one. -- it will not be the only one. i would urge people to realize that there are more than one kind of antiaircraft weapon. there's more than one way to shoot down planes or shoot at isis or any kind of aircraft. it does not have to be stingers. there are lots of other ways you can do this. an intelligent discussion has to be had. i think the u.s. government has looked into that significantly. our regional allies will be

providing some of the heavier weapons along the way, some of which will require our permission, and some of which will not, and we need to keep track of that. weapons like money are fungible and ubiquitous. they are going to flow. weapons are a form of cash and any type of ore zone. if we think we are going to give weapons to one group, no matter how well-intentioned and how moderate they might be, and that they are not going to flow across the range of groups involved in armed conflict, possibly including the people they are fighting against, we are just kidding ourselves. they are going to move. they are going to flow. not to say that the bulk of them will not stay with the people we want them to, and that without give them a qualitative advantage. for that matter, they may need more to continue to build their qualitative advantage, so they may use weapons as currency to indirect week build up what we want, even if that is certainly not the means we would have

chosen. but we need to be eyes wide open about all the downsides of the proposals that we are making, the increasing humanitarian casualties, and the flow of weapons being two of the most notable up front. >> i have a couple of thoughts on that specific to syria and leakage. first, there is no perfect solution. if there was a better way forward, it would be great, but this is i would say the least bad of a set of bad options. working with bashar al-assad probably being the worst. by the way, ryan has changed his view on that. so that said, there are many places in syria where there are moderate, more or less secular armed opposition groups who are not coordinating right now. to the extent that we are worried about arms leaking, this

is particularly true up in the north so that if we are concerned about stuff leaking -- i think that is the biggest risk right now -- we could start with them, but in order for that even to work, we are going to need to have excellent information about what those groups are doing, so we will have to bureaucratically ramp up the effort to have that information. a lot of it is on youtube, but it is in arabic. second, we have be very transparent with the syrian partners, that this stuff leaking for us could change everything. i think a lot of times, syrians read stuff into our intentions which is not exactly right. because they have their own reality, and it's not always where the washington political reality is. sometimes, it is dramatically different. in addition to explaining, we

will have to be agile and flexible. this group, if they are not dependable, the message will get out the quick among them. at the americans really are not serious about this. i take your point that you cannot fill up the zone immediately, but cash would be a good start to lower recruits away -- lure recruits away because that's how they got them in the first place. there are steps we can take that do not failsafe, but they can reduce the risk. as i said, it's going to be a bumpy, turbulent ride. >> hartline has worked in places like -- hard line has worked in places like mali and iraq. >> with respect to the importance of civilians of

money, with all the groups we talked with, even those based out of turkey, for them, money was an incredibly significant thing in terms of building momentum over time, that the ability to pay some element of a salary would be a thing that could perhaps build some of the greatest cohesion going forward, so i do not think we can underestimate the utility of that. >> especially in the culture over there. >> they are going to be unintended consequences. >> even if we have good safeguards and we minimize the leakage to bad guys we are still

going to have friends in the region that are contributing. what do you do about them? this has been a problem for years. this must be transparent. i think this is one where the president is going to have to engage more. talking to, shall we say, countries not keeping to the agreed deal. but on the other hand i think when there is american pressure, even with the islamic front, friends, they will squeeze. the islamic front has been moderating its position starting in may when they issued that statement backing off of an islamic state. they say they want a state of law.

which is different. even that can be done. i think going forward, this is one where the president himself is going to have to take his time. he is a busy guy. .t is going to take that time when they are not making progress the president is going to have to pick up the phone. presidentmore engaged . >> it is leadership. >> we are going to open it up to questions. >> thank you. thank you for staying for the panel. wanted to build on your point, there is skepticism whether the new plans will be followed through on following the speech. a lot of the skepticism is related to the fact there is not faith in the administration's claims about where we are going

because there is some that say the administration hasn't been honest about how we got to where we are. he talked about the moderate opposition. because of the support that we have already provided to the syrian opposition over the last year, the capacity is bigger and stronger. saying the he searing opposition is much better than it was, which is refuted, but the obama administration deserves credit for it and they have -- [indiscernible] isator john mccain said it unbelievable. they have been decimated. for the white house to say they lie.tronger is an outright who is right? the white house or john mccain? do you think this is really or this isppen,

going to be another example of lucy holding the football for charlie brown? syrian rebels will find themselves out of luck. thank you. >> who wants to take that? [laughter] >> i will start. first of all, i think it is important that everyone asks president obama what he means in his decisions. he is clearly uncomfortable about this. even the speech, you could see how uncomfortable he really is with this. that being said, i think that given what he has committed the united states to he has made the decision. in terms of lucy and the football, i don't know how you would pull the football back at this point. if you did it would make the non-strike incident last year politically unpalatable.

first of all i would urge the administration to stop spinning. it is digging yourself into a hole. way out ofrgue your this one. a lot of the assistance has gone to the moderate opposition. that is one thing. nonlethal assistance. we have been a huge provider. we should have credit for that. that is what should be emphasized. militarily, they are not as effective. they talk to the jordanians. they will tell you that qualitatively and quantitatively they are weaker over the last year. i don't how anybody can spin it that way. [inaudible] [laughter] get in thegoing to middle of a discussion between the white house and senator mccain. first, from my time in

government, doug would agree, when the president gives a speech out of the white house, that is not a small thing. of interagency coordination and meetings. when he goes in front of the nation, that is a rare event. , the different departments and agencies, should be lined up. implementation is the question. i am less concerned about the commitment at this point than i am about the implementation. the implementation needs to start. congress has a busy schedule. and a lot of people want to break to go back on to their districts. i am nervous. some of the reporting is quite good. they are going to leave town without voting on this. then they are going to have questions in the region, people

who don't understand our constitution. in their countries there is no such thing as a free and independent parliament. they will see the americans conspiring. i hope this congress does not it.urn before acting on that is the first step. let's get the votes and go forward. keyf i could add, it is a point. it is a good question. somethingur debate, about our political culture right now. the president says some ink and the opposition has to say something. that is good to have a democracy. , asar this blame game opposed to what i think where the energy should be devoted. these tough issues, which we policy nerds like to wrestle with. these are real issues for people

who are slaving inside of the government with these constraints. these are the real issues, as opposed to -- you can warm whatever mistakes were made over the last year. , itead of this surface level was right. i don't think there is any fall. -- any fault. i still stand by that view. these are complicated issues. saying put out reports just when we were out they pulled us back in. forward.ortant to look have a lot ofo people on the hill doing that right now. that is one positive thing. >> if i can jump in, a lot of our problems in syria have become -- have been because we perfectked for the solution. let's go with a good solution and start with that.

there is no perfect solution. >> thank you. we talk a lot about our , andbility with allies there is an issue of our credibility in the international community. i would agree with the statement drawn,e map that was there was a question of legitimacy right now. those are state borders. when the president talks about being willing to strike in syria , and prime minister cameron syria, ast strikes in perfectly legitimate because the government of assad is illegitimate, regardless of our credibility with our arab allies, what about the

credibility in the broader international community as far as respecting international law? >> that is a key question. i have a long list of questions. it is a controversial issue and difficult. the issue of the legitimacy. syria whichde of the president is talking about. you want to take a stab at it? is, we may be able to work out the legal authorities question in the united states, but if we are going to build a regional international coalition to get this done, we are going at this bend a fair amount of time at the united nations working to support thatal

will allow us to maintain this over time. we are getting close to a moment in terms of our international position where questions will be raised about how was what you are doing now any different than what was done another historical examples that we are not as proud of? it is important we spend the time at the u.n. and other bodies to develop elements of consensus moving forward. the question is going to be difficult. no one knows how to write that resolution. yet. there are people working on it. are at a thing is we moment where we have to look closely at how far we want to spend in that effort in a sense that a number of diplomats spend tremendous and heroic efforts trying to deal with this with other members of the p5. we know russia, this isn't going to go as smooth as we would

like. we need to make the effort. i don't think we can be constrained by that. , beyondld add international considerations, the domestic. want it toution, we figure out -- and we have invitations to make this a bigger event, we want to bring people from the hill. topic. hard idol have the expertise. we are not lawyers. to deal with this issue of u.s. congressional authorization. we feel strongly that in general this framework and how we are talking about it is pretty shaky. -- congress doesn't want to vote on this. encouragingw things. we want to invite those voices to have the discussion. i hope we can have that event.

getting them to a think tank while they are doing everything else. i wanted to add to the international dimension, the framework in which we put in the paper there needs to be a broader discussion. pragmatically the american public is different compared to where was a year ago on this. for obvious reasons. having a national consensus on that for our institutions would be essential. next question. >> i wanted to ask the question related to iran. november 21 is rolling in on us quickly. the deadline for the extension of the talks on their nuclear program. how does this play into, how might this play out if that falls apart and we are in the

midst of this, and iran becomes a factor in terms of what we are going to do next? can you gain that out at all? what does it mean? >> ok. i will take the first shot. mention, thent to way it has been staked out to the american people, we are fighting against isis. there is a huge regionalized sectarian war going on in syria theiraq between iran and arab countries, soon the country specifically. sunni, shia war. out of these negotiations impact that? if the negotiations go well, that will perhaps make the iranians to be more useful. the iranians in the regime do

-- omit control of the that. people will try to say otherwise. those are two things the regime has structure. and the the moderate sword. .he sword is raging war the assad regime. if it goes badly, i don't think that we can say that everything , we do any cooperation share some interests with them. that will be maintained. we can see there could be talks postponed. a is a possibility. other than that it is hard to look in a crystal ball on this one. >> somebody we talked about this

before, the white house has to be the air traffic controller on these pieces. perhaps the president himself. if you heard about about siri he is steeped in the details of this. somebody needs to figure out how these fit together. l notionshis fantastica , maybe we will be up to cooperate with them operationally on iraq and other things. i think on the ground it is harder probably to actually do that. my main point being, it is hard , do the this a administration is going to align sith a sought or iran -- a sad or iran? it doesn't make sense because of the regional coalition many to

build. look to november of last year. all of the erratic public protests about the iran deal. and the need for the administration to go out with secretary hagel. to embrace the gulf states and say we are with you. that times 10 in this if we were to open up the door without consultation mike we are working with iran. academic.t it is a nice idea but hard to implement. perhaps one more question. sorry about that. and absentdiscussion i work with the palestinian delegation. i'm curious. the elephant in the room is the assad regime.

i seem to see it is a major attractor and a reason behind the metastases in of the islamic state. what is your take on the role of the assad regime? it could cause problems with the united states and syria and diverting attention from a syrian opposition from attacking the islamic state. i was curious if you could touch on that element. assadposition on the regime is well known. i should say this. their deputy foreign minister said they would like to work with us. the problem is that working with sunni arabmes the opinion i was talking about before. that is the big picture. tactically i don't i don't have

a lot to contribute on the ground. their forces are stretched. maintainstruggling to their last military base. sense, they will inject themselves. they will expend the bulk of their military efforts, especially their airpower hitting not the islamic states, most of their efforts were not against islamic states. they were in suburban damascus where they are fighting elements of the moderate opposition. that is why i say we have to understand when we go into this and we talk about support of the syrian opposition, they are fighting a two front war. the assad regime, it is a hard fight. it is going to be messy as we tried to channel our assistance

to that one front but not to the other. a sod is going to everything he can to make that messy. >> we are coming to the end of our time. two things. get a report online. supporting the syrian opposition. we put a lot of work into this. respect and value their work. it is a team effort. please join me in thanking our esteemed panel what has been a great discussion. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014]

>> this morning, new york times correspondent nate cohn looks at the campaigns. later, we talk about the

president's plan for defeating isis in iraq and syria. as always, we'll take your calls, and you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter. "washington journal" is next. host: good morning. it's the "washington journal" for september 13. the u.s. has expanded sanctions against russia. this goes directly to five companies that deal in oil, financial services, and defense sectors. the new york times looks at recent actions by hillary clinton that could benefit her should she decide to run for president. one mentions her speaking at the harkin steak fry, an event designed to excite democrats before a fall election. you can see her comments at the harkin steak fry tomorrow on c-span. that will be at 3:30 in the afternoon. the newspaper "roll call" profiles the 50 richest members of congress with the top person on the list being worth $350 io