good evening i'm a mirror david live in washington d.c. you are watching our special coverage on the fate of syria we begin tonight with a speech from president barack obama will be addressing the nation and just a few moments on what the u.s. response should be to the use of chemical weapons in syria obama has been pushing for support of his plan to launch military strikes against the country yet the talk comes just a day after new developments have arisen hinting at a possible diplomatic solution for the war torn country and while obama tries to win support from the public and congress the american people still have questions why intervene now over to you over two years into the civil syrian civil war and after one hundred thousand people have already died in the conflict has obama's

rhetoric changed since he began calling for the strikes is russia's proposal for syria to hand over its chemical weapons stockpile to international control a workable solution is russia taking the reigns in this conflict or is obama going to react to the crossing of his red line and will military response remain an option as a diplomatic solution the u.s. and russia are at odds over the rules by which syria might turn over its chemical weapons stockpile to international control obama spoke today with leaders of france and the u.k. on whether the russian proposal is workable and now president obama is addressing is walking up to the podium and will address the nation my fellow americans it's not i want to talk to you about syria why it matters and where we go from here. over the past two years what began as

a series of peaceful protests against the repressive regime of bashar al assad has turned into a brutal civil war over one hundred thousand people have been killed millions have fled the country in that time america's worked with allies to provide humanitarian support to help the moderate opposition and to shape a political settlement but i have resisted calls for military action because we cannot resolve someone else's civil war through force particularly after a decade of war in iraq and afghanistan the situation profoundly changed though on august twenty first when assad's government gassed to death over a thousand people including hundreds of children the images from this massacre are sickening men women children lying in rows killed by poison gas others foaming at the mouth gasping for breath

a father clutching his dead children imploring them to get up and walk on that terrible night the world saw in gruesome detail the terrible nature of chemical weapons and why the overwhelming majority of humanity has declared them off limits a crime against humanity and a violation of the laws of war this was not always the case in world war one american g.i.'s were among the many thousands killed by deadly gas in the trenches of europe in world war two the nazis used gas to inflict the horror of the holocaust because these weapons can kill on a mass scale with no distinction between soldier and infant the civilized world has spent a century working to ban the. and then nine hundred ninety seven the united states senate overwhelmingly approved an international agreement prohibiting the use of

chemical weapons now joined by one hundred eighty nine governments that represent ninety eight percent of humanity on august twenty first these basic rules were violated along with our sense of common humanity no one disputes that chemical weapons were used in syria the world saw thousands of videos cell phone pictures and social media accounts from the attack and humanitarian organizations told stories of hospitals packed with people who had symptoms of poison gas moreover we know the assad regime was responsible in the days leading up to august twenty first we know that assad's chemical weapons personnel prepared for an attack near an area where they mix sarin gas they distributed gas masks to their troops then they fired rockets from a regime controlled area into eleven neighborhoods that the regime has been trying to wipe clear of opposition forces shortly after those rockets landed the gas

spread and hospitals filled with the dying and the wounded we know senior figures in assad's military machine reviewed the results of the attack in the regime increased their shelling of the same neighborhoods in the days that followed we've also studied samples of blood and hair from people at the site that tested positive for sara when dictators commit atrocities they depend upon the world to look the other way until those horrifying pictures fade from memory but these things happened. the facts cannot be denied the question now is what the united states of america and the international community is prepared to do about it because what happened to those people to those children is not only a violation of international law. it's also

a danger to our security. let me explain why. if we fail to act the assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons as the ban against these weapons or roads other tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas and using them over time our troops would again face the prospect of chemical warfare on the battlefield and it could be easier for terrorist organizations to obtain these weapons and to use them to attack civilians if fighting spills beyond syria's borders these weapons could threaten allies like turkey jordan and israel and a failure to stand against the use of chemical weapons would weaken prohibitions against other weapons of mass destruction and embolden assad's ally iran which must decide whether to ignore international law by building a nuclear weapon or to take a more peaceful path this is not

a world we should accept this is what's at stake and that is why after careful deliberation i determined that it is in the national security interests of the united states to respond to the assad regime's use of chemical weapons through a targeted military strike the purpose of the strike would be to deter assad from using chemical weapons to degrade his regimes ability to use them and then make clear to the world that we will not tolerate their use that's my judgment as commander in chief but i'm also the president of the world's oldest constitutional democracy so even though i possess the authority to order military strikes i believed it was right in the absence of a direct or imminent threat to our security to take this debate to congress i believe our democracy is stronger when the president acts with the support of congress and i believe that america acts more effectively abroad when we stand

together. this is especially true after a decade that put more and more war making power in the hands of the president and more and more burdens on the shoulders of our troops while sidelining the people's representatives from the critical decisions about when we use force now i know that after the terrible toll of iraq and afghanistan the idea of any military action no matter how limited is not going to be popular after all i've spent four and a half years working to end wars not to start them our troops are out of iraq our troops are coming home from afghanistan and i know americans want all of us in washington especially me to concentrate on the task of building our nation here at home putting people back to work educating our kids growing our middle class it's no wonder then that you're asking hard questions so let me answer some of the

most important questions that i've heard from members of congress and that i've read in letters that you've sent to me first many of you have asked won't this put us on a slippery slope to another war one man wrote to me that we are still recovering from our involvement in iraq a veteran put it more bluntly this nation is sick and tired of war my answer is simple i will not put american boots on the ground in syria i will not pursue an open ended action like iraq or afghanistan i will not pursue a prolonged air campaign like libya or kosovo this would be a targeted strike to achieve a clear objective deterring the use of chemical weapons and degrading assad's capabilities others have asked whether it's worth acting if we don't take out assad

as some members of congress have said there's no point in simply doing a pinprick strike in syria let me make something clear the united states military doesn't do pinpricks. even a limited strike will send a message to assad that no other nation can deliver i don't think we should remove another dictator with force and we learned from iraq that doing so makes us responsible for all that comes next but a targeted strike can make assad or any other dictator think twice before using chemical weapons other questions involve the dangers of retaliation we don't dismiss any threats but the assad regime does not have the ability to seriously threaten our military and the other any other retaliation they might seek is in line with threats that we face every day neither assad nor his allies have any interest in escalation that would lead to his demise and our ally israel can

defend itself with overwhelming force as well as the unshakeable support of the united states of america many of you have asked a broader question why should we get involved at all in a place that's so complicated and where as one person wrote to me those who come after assad may be enemies of human rights it's true that some of assad's opponents are extremists but al qaeda will only draw strength in a more chaotic syria if people there see the world doing nothing to prevent innocent civilians from being gassed to death the majority of the syrian people and the syrian opposition we work with just want to live in peace with dignity and freedom and the day after any military action we would redouble our efforts to achieve a political solution that strengthens those who reject the forces of tyranny and

extremism finally many of you have asked my not leave this to other countries or seek solutions short of force as several people wrote to me we should not be the world's policeman i agree and i have a deeply held preference for peaceful solutions. over the last two years my administration has tried to plumb a-c. and sanctions warnings and negotiations but chemical weapons were still used by the assad regime however and over the last few days we've seen some encouraging signs in part because of the credible threat of u.s. military action as well as constructive talks that i had with president putin the russian government has indicated a willingness to join with the international community in pushing assad to give up

his chemical weapons the assad regime has now admitted that it has these weapons and even said they joined the chemical weapons convention which prohibits their use it's too early to tell whether this offer will succeed in any agreement must have verify that the assad regime keeps its commitments but this initiative has the potential to remove the threat of chemical weapons without the use of force particularly because russia is one of assad's strongest allies i have therefore asked the leaders of congress to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force while we pursue this diplomatic path i'm sending secretary of state john kerry to meet his russian counterpart on thursday and i will continue my own discussions with president putin i've spoken to the leaders of two of our closest allies france and the united kingdom and we will work together in consultation with russia and china to put forward a resolution at the u.n.

security council requiring assad to give up his chemical weapons and to ultimately destroy them under international control will also give you an inspectors the up to him to report their findings about what happened on august twenty first and we will continue to rally support from allies from europe to the americas from asia to the middle east who agree on the need for action meanwhile i've ordered our military to maintain their current posture to keep the pressure on assad and to be in a position to respond if diplomacy fails. and tonight i give thanks again to our military and their families for their incredible strength and sacrifices my fellow americans for nearly seven decades the united states has been the anchor of global security this is men doing more than forging international agreements it has meant enforcing them the burdens of leadership are often heavy but the world's

a better place because we have borne them and so to my friends on the right i ask you to reconcile your commitment to america's military might with a failure to act when a cause is so plainly just to my friends on the left i ask you to reconcile your belief in freedom and dignity for all people with those images of children writhing in pain and going still on a cold hospital floor for sometimes resolutions and statements of condemnation are simply not enough indeed i'd ask every member of congress and those of you watching at home tonight to view those videos of the attack and then ask what kind of world will we live in if the united states of america sees a dictator brazenly violate international law with poison gas and we choose to look the other way franklin roosevelt once said our national determination to keep

free of foreign wars and foreign entanglements cannot prevent us from feeling deep concern when ideals and principles that we have cherished are challenged our ideals and principles as well as our national security are at stake in syria along with our leadership of the world where we seek to ensure that the worst weapons will never be used america's not the world's policeman terrible things happen across the globe and it is beyond our means to right every wrong but when with modest effort and risk we can stop children from being gassed to death. and thereby make our own children safer over the long run i believe we should act that's what makes america different that's what makes us

exceptional with humility but with resolve let us never lose sight of that essential truth thank you god bless you and god bless the united states of america . you've been watching president obama address the nation live from the east room of the white house i want to get some immediate reaction to the speech so let's go live to the white house where our t. correspondent megan mopeds is. i mean again what were the highlights. what were the highlights of president obama's speech. there were a lot but my mirror more importantly there were more questions going into this speech than there were answers coming out of it we wanted to know where president obama stood because there are still so many questions as to where you stand we want to know where congress stands so what came out of the speech was essentially a reiteration of the media blitz that we saw yesterday when president obama went on c.n.n. fox news p.b.s. a.b.c. c.b.s.

except he said that there is no doubt that chemical weapons were used in the country again he reiterated his criticism and if you hear there's chanting behind me obviously those protesters again reiterated his criticism of those on and blamed him for those chemical weapons he said that everybody sees what the. question what should be done about it and. he showed some older folks obviously. recent days with all the recent developments with russia and china and do you mind getting involved however we are seeing still that really hard line stance coming out from president obama saying that action is necessary and as you heard i'm sure he said yes the u.s. is not the world's police but it is important for the people to watch those videos and to make a determination for themselves that this is something that he knew i should be involved in absolutely and megan i can barely hear you because of all the people that are on the ground right by you at the white house what are they saying right

now what what is the reaction that you've been able to garner from from listening to what people are saying. we've got a lot of people out here right now as you know there's about one hundred people they've brought large signs they have. it's actually set up in loudspeakers and whatnot they streamed the entire speech and there was a lot of open dialogue and open criticism to what the president was thank you obviously everything already here is very very dense intervention in syria and they want to make their point known which is why they're out here expressing their at their hocks in their view. things megan for joining us that was our tease make a lopez from the white house now to get more reaction to the speech and ask where do we go from here let's bring in a panel political commentator sam sax and our t.v. producer rachel curteous thank you guys so much for joining me now you guys are sitting here watching the speech right along with me sam let's start with you i want to get your thoughts will first off the president was up against timing here

the timing of the speech isn't the best we don't have a resolution in congress ship for anything you want to do the seven hundred one it's working on a new one we have a possible diplomatic solution on the table that could avert all of these military strikes and that the president has to come out and make the case to the american people that they need to get behind military strikes that now may or may not happen but beyond that we heard a lot of the same from the present that we've heard over the last week and that we heard yesterday his interviews he likes to play that moral card you know he said the images of massacre are second until he ended his speech by appealing to the american people to watch these videos he really wants to play this moral this moral card he tried to have the evidence again and he didn't say anything new with the evidence and similar to the evidence that was released by the white house last week and we found that members of congress are not completely convinced by that evidence and he directly wanted to speak to this question of why syria why is syria against the national security interest of the united states and he said let me explain why it was probably important that he says those words because

a lot of people are confused and then he went on to basically say a lot of the same things that john kerry says that if you don't do something to assad for allegedly using chemical weapons it might embolden other people doing it but overall i don't see any game changers in this space. something new that will move this forward for the white house will he absolutely spoke directly to the american people rachel what what did you what were your thoughts on what happened i was surprised that it took until eleven minutes in for president obama to even bring up any of the diplomatic solutions that have really been driving the news for the past couple of days we heard about eleven minutes in about this idea that perhaps syria will of its own accord with the help of russia give up its chemical weapons but really i mean the first ten minutes or so of the speech were all about talking about why we needed to strike because he seemed a little reticent to believe that this might actually happen and one thing he says is any agreement the diplomatically made between the united states and its partners and syrian its partners must verify that assad keeps his commitment to it sounds to

me a lot like chapter seven of the united nations you know in making sure that there is force behind the agreement that it's not just words but that there is some meaningful military way of verifying that this happens that of course is something i think that many other members of the u.n. security council like russia and china will not one just wouldn't stand for wouldn't agree to so at this point it seems a little bit like a staring match between world powers with kind of syria in the middle and it absolutely was interesting that he waited so long into the speech to bring it up it shows sort of what you know his initiative is and it will at the same time he sets it up by saying i want a diplomatic solution that's what i want most as useful but it's a do a speech about him which was slightly odd but sound you know the president gave this primetime address to lobby of course the american people at the same time he's telling congress he wants to delay this vote it's a little confusing what do you make of it why don't think you know so much of a choice and i don't think he intended to give the speech when he first decided to

go to congress last week so he doesn't have the votes i mean that's that's pretty simple he's asking congress to lay that because he doesn't have the votes you can the white house says differently in senate majority leader harry reid. says they have the votes but look sort of minority leaders against this and we know that the senate is working on a new resolution as we speak to try and get more people on board who are a little bit hasn't had to immediately go through strikes they're working on this resolution that's kind of based off this russian point senator joe manchin put forward that we exhaust the u.n. . alternative before we move on to military strikes so really this is the this is the bad him that he's kind of played himself into or now this is his last ditch effort to appeal to the american people and really he might be bailed out by this russian plan will say and speaking of the russian plan rachel i'm going to go to you because i want you to talk a little bit more about it and really sort of how his speech all fits into. whether

this is going to move forward or not sure so the plan that came out essentially whether it came from an off the cuff kind of ridiculous statement from john kerry as as it seemed at first or whether it was actually the result of more than a week of deliberations between the united states and syria and russia. kind of it's still i think up for debate but essentially the idea is that syria would open up its chemical weapons stocks which are now acknowledges that it does indeed have and it would allow both the united nations and russia or and other international bodies to go in and kind of scope those out it would also make sure center that it would cease production of any new chemical weapons and of course not use them again now this was brought forth to the united nations and the deliberations on that will continue another thing that the syrian foreign minister said today was that they were interested in actually signing on to the chemical weapons convention which was signed by most other countries in the early to mid ninety's and syria which is not a part of this treaty so when when obama says that basic rules are violated he is

appealing to americans morals rather than a convention that syria itself has ratified or signed onto in any meaningful way but with this would would do essentially is make it such that syria would not be able to use these chemical weapons again it will. right now it's not really technically violating international law that it never signed on to in the first place but for president obama who's claiming that all he ever wanted to do was deter president assad and other governments in the future from using these chemical weapons this could be a win that doesn't involve any of the intervention that we've been hearing about and sam i want to go back to you and talk a little bit more about congress because we're more than a week into the white house really making this effort on congress for them to get on board with this military intervention what kinds of concerns do congressman have and do you think the speech really address those concerns probably not i don't see the speech. two are all of those who have come out in state to position i mean half the members of congress have such a position those who have staked position vast majority are against this and seem

pretty firmly entrenched against this and i don't think the president addressed any of those concerns in the number one concern and look there are some members of congress who are a little uneasy about the evidence but obama has the votes of people who do think that assad did this the only concern they have there was whether or not a military strike is the solution here and how is it that you can have a targeted limited military strike that doesn't escalate into war one thing we heard from these hearings that have been addressed is what happens if assad retaliates and the president actually said yes that quote this is a slippery slope to war what are the dangers of retaliation and the president said look there's no boots no air campaign no open the door but if assad retaliates and kerry said that will make him sorry that sounds like an escalation so once you let the dogs of war out essentially which is what this is doing who knows what happened in the white house has yet to provide an answer of how this is going to how this won't escalate and another thing i think that obama or president obama is trying to

do in this speech was the congressmen have been saying listen it's really hard for me to vote to authorize any military action when all of the information and feedback i've been getting from my constituents say a thousand to one opposed to intervention in syria so he's thinking that perhaps if constituents are actually looking at these you tube videos they might be more inclined to speak to their representatives and say you know what maybe this intervention isn't such a bad idea after all. appeal he made to congress in which he said i want the right to who love our military embrace our military how that can they reconcile living this up and then with the love to love human dignity and everything to make sure this happens restricting road to congress to kind of ignore their constituents go but to go to their principles absolutely well we'll have to wait and see what happens and what the american reaction is going to be while that was political commentator sam saxon r.t.e. producer rachel kearns yes and that does it for now thanks for joining us in a special coverage on syria and of course for more on stories that we covered today go to youtube dot com slash r t america and check out our web site r t dot com

slash usa good night. i know c.n.n. the premise n.b.c. and fox news have taken some not slightly but the fact is i admire their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be accurate. that was funny but it's close enough if it might think. it's because one scholar titian and the mainstream media work side by side with actually i'm here. at our team we have to print. because the news of the world just is not this funny i'm not laughing dammit i'm not how.

you guys talk to the jokes will handle me ok. think. i would rather ask questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on our t.v. question. the

but. you know i'm abby martin and this is breaking the set so even though it is sad regime has agreed to give it give up its chemical weapons arsenal obama and his team of the one man this continued into closer to the night in a powder keg in syria as a result in two thousand speech from the then state senator obama started to attract attention and was campaign web site posted a video in two thousand and seven to highlight his fierce opposition to military intervention during the run up to the iraq war conveniently only thirteen seconds of the original two thousand and two speech exists online take a listen. i don't oppose it also.