transfer prisoners stuff like that but there was one crucial component that democratic senator carl levin included in the last defended defense spending bill that gave the president it out and it was a national security waiver that said that the president can instruct the pentagon to release any of these detainees prisoners anywhere if it's in the name of national security now the president has routinely said that keeping on top of them obey open goes against our national security interests that's being used as a recruitment tool so what does that justification he could start releasing prisoners using this national security waiver and he hasn't done it senator carl levin wrote him a letter a few months ago saying i have fought hard to include this waiver for you to use it please use it the president still has yet to use it we can go back and forth on whether or not president obama has has the right avenues to do this but the fact of the matter is that there are some strong forces at play that i think are happening within the u.s. congress that are that are kind of also something to know a

he is responding to manchin, carl levin. responding to libertarians like rand paul who oppose it. she not listening to john kerry, he is not listening to john mccain. they are hard line and they want him to go and go now. >> the time he should have been listening is before he made the announcement we have to act. before kerry said in front of the world the word of america is at stake. before the entire administration leaked the plan to explain exactly were it had to act. right now we are way beyond the other arguments, we are way beyond the polls. way beyond the issues, is this the best way to attack. i this it is not. the only -- >> it doesn't matter -- >> cannot be -- >> you have to listen for a second to martin dempsey if the chairman of joint chiefs of staff says to you, it doesn't matter if we go tomorrow, it doesn't matter if we go next week, we will still have an effective military strike against assad. we will hurt assad. then that open it is window to this that so many americans want to take place. >> why? there is no gap that we can hurt assad. and i don't think that the

. >> even the chairman of the senate armed services committee, carl levin, he issued a statement saying, bring congress back. let congress get fully briefed. let congress pass some sort of resolution before there is action. it's one thing for a republican critic of the president like john cornyn, who's very influential, very important, but when you get carl levin saying something similar, bring congress back, let there be a vote. there you see an aide bringing the president's statement out there. the president's going to be walking out within the next few seconds and making his statement. lots of things we should focus on. how detailed will the president be? will he review all the intelligence that john kerry laid out yesterday? will he go into more detail? will he talk about congressional authorization, the mandate resolution which the russians have repeatedly threatened to veto? is there some new language that could avert a russian veto? will the president go into any specifics on that? will he talk about the lack of support from britain that the british parliament refused to endorse

but carl levin, and this is what he had to say about it at the time. >> the risk and disregarded riskits and manipulated risk models, dodged oversight and misinformed the public. >> cenk: that seems pretty bad. let's bring david cay johnston if whoa is an expert on this and covers this area. what do you think about the charges, and are they appropriate for what you think about this case? >> they're very troubling. here's what happened. the trader in the center made a good record to protect himself. so they went after the person one step below and one step above him. but the report in the new york sometimes this morning has a very pregnant observation. it questions the upper level trader, the overseeing trader as saying that they were not to follow the rules as expected. and when the guy who isn't being charged, bruno iksil, when he said, what are you saying? that was orders of management, senior management from new york. that's the big question all along. how far did the knowledge go. if you remember when the story was leaked in 2009 it was not believable. the claim was a hedge design

remember tourre first came it light in senate hearings before senator carl levin.oldman sachs hearing. and goldman sachs settled for $550 million. but tourre was the face of this. the members of congress and sec came down hard on. as can you see, found liable in six of the seven counts. >> thanks very much. what a developing story. well continue covering this with all angleed. >> one of the criticism was that nobody had been brought it trial for the financial crisis. >> right. >> and it is starting to happen now. >> and that's the point. sec has wanted to be more aggressive. bu because they want to show the world, we are the cops on the beat. and we will get the guys, the bad guys down. all right. in the meanwhile, we we have a record rally on wall street. if we close here in 15 minutes, we will close at another all-time high. >> by the way, s&p above 17 hundred for the first time ever. so will this day end in record territory? we go back to the floor for what is happening realtime a right after this. of thousands of dols in hidden fees on their 401(k)s?! go to e-t

you have the members carl levin and jim imhoff they both had a very different view. imhoff of oklahoma said that there shouldn't be any strikes. carl levin said he wanted to see the president do more to seek international support. obviously the british pulled out of any coalition with a vote in their parliament. i think as in recent years, this is going to be something the president is ultimately going to make a decision on because the congress is not going to speak with one clear voice on what he should do. host: jonathan allen is politico's white house journal >> that conversation from earlier today. we are learning that president obama is meeting with his national security team at the white house. this is in preparation for a response on syria. should any news come from that meeting, we will bring it to u.s. soon as it is available. among those briefs in the house john boehner, nancy pelosi, eric cantor, steny hoyer, and kevin mccarthy. the top foreign relations committee, bob walker, charles schumer, and james imhoff. just some of the members that were briefed on

what we're seeing from chuck hagel and some senators on top of this issue, claire mccaskill and carl levinrt of taking the reporting of sexual assault outside of the chain of command which means women or men who have to report sexual assault, they have to do so to their commanding officer. that commanding officer might be friends with the victim's attackers. they may be the victim's attacker so one of the things that senator kirsten gillibrand is pointing out is how critical it is to take that line of reporting outside of the line of command. the push back from officers who want to preserve their power and want to preserve the way things are is it will disrupt discipline and order to remove this reporting through the chain of command. i'll let senator gillibrand respond to that. >> i don't know how you can say that having 19,000 sexual assaults and rapes a year is discipline and order. i do not understand how you can say that of those 19,000 cases, to only have approximately 2400 even reported because the victims tell us that they are afraid to report because of retaliation and the blame t

senate armed services chair carl levin says, quote: i again express my view that the united states shouldtors complete their work and that the impacted of such a strike would be weakened if it does not have the participation and support much a large number of nations including arab nations. that may be a challenge with only france sounding like it's ready to join the military strike at this point, harris. >> harris: interesting. so much of the dissension with within the own ranks of the president's party. there is some criticism about the way the white house is communicated what it plarchs to do. -- plans to do. >> we heard from the top republican on the senate armed services committee earlier today who sounded frustrated that key lawmakers were not getting details. >> there is a new term you are going to hear over and over and over again as we did last night. called a broad range of options secretary kerry said we are going to offer the president a broad range of options. but, you know, we talked for an hour and a half and they didn't mention one of the options. >> based on other stateme

as for other possible options, in a letter to senate armed services chairman michigan senator carl levinmonth, joint chiefs of staff chairman martin dempsey said containing syria's chemical weapons stockpile would require lethal force. at a minimum, this option would call for a no-fly zone as well as air and missile strikes involving hundreds of aircraft, thousands of special operations forces and other ground forces would be needed to assault and secure critical sites. costs could also average well over $1 billion per month. and this week, dempsey cautioned the ranking democrat on the house foreign affairs committee against backing the rebel forces militarily. "syria today is not about choosing between two sides but rather about choosing one among many sides." he wrote, "it is my belief that the side we choose must be ready to promote their interests and ours when the balance shifts in their favor. today, they are not." the american people appear reluctant as well. in a july quinnipiac university poll, 61% of americans said it is not in the national interest to be involved in syria. if

senate armed services committee has rejected that approach, in favor of one offered its chairman, carl levinmichigan. it keeps prosecutions within the chain of command. today, the director of the joint staff, lieutenant general curtis scaparrotti, said there's ample opportunity for victims to be heard. >> our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines know that today there's about ten avenues for them to report and they also know that when they do report, it immediately goes to a military investigation office in law enforcement. >> brown: for her part, gillibrand voiced disappointment with the pentagon's response. in a statement, she said: meanwhile, defense secretary chuck hagel today ordered military leaders to base decisions in sexual assault cases only on the facts and their independent judgment. that's after president obama said this, in may. >> if we find out somebody's engaging in this stuff, they've got to be held accountable, prosecuted, stripped of their positions, court-martialed, fired, dishonorably discharged. period. >> brown: defense attorneys have argued that president obama's sta

and democratic senator carl levin of michigan said he wants to give u.n. inspectors time to finish their work. and the head of the house armed services committee said the president has work to do as well. >> it's up to the president of the united states to present his case, to sell this to the american public. they're very war weary. we've been at war for other ten years. there are a lot of people who do not want to see us get involved in another issue over there. however, there are problems if we take action. there are problemses if we don't take action. >> information shared on the call linking the assad regime to last week's deadly chemical strikes is in the process of being declassified and could be released to the public within days. overseas, france insists it's still willing to go ahead with plans to strike syria but the other critical part of that coalition, the uk, is out. this comes after the british parliament rejected prime minister cameron's impassioned pleas for action. voting against a military strike, amid concerns it could lead to an iraq-

role in confirming the president's nominations and general dempsey came forward at the request of carl levin, the chairman of the armed services committee and john mccain with a list of contingen contingencies, military contingencies for syria and he came forward with the list, a no-fly zone, a buffer zone, a stand-off cruise missile attack on down the line monitoring, and the overall tone from general dempsey, and i defer to the general and would like to ask the general, was very skeptical. he talked about the billions of dollars in costs involved. he talked about the unknown outcomes. and as a matter of fact, more recently than that in that letter we all know about and talked about to a great extent to elliott angel, the top democrat on the house foreign affairs expressed a great deal of skepticism about the riz.com of questioning what the president is considering, a cruise missile strike because you are taking the lid off of all of these disparate elements, hezbollah, al-qaeda on opposite sides, iran, syria, the regional conflagration there that seems to never end and the competing factor

this morning will show remarks by armed service committee chair senator carl levin.there will also be a panel discussion with reserve chiefs of all the military service branches. they are expected to focus on impact of those automatic defense spending cuts on military readiness, combat assault and force posture outlook after the drawdown in afghanistan. live coverage on c-span2 beginning in just a few moments. we will have it for you here when it gets under way. while we wait, more now on -- [inaudible conversations] >> it appears they are about to start and just a moment. very quickly, the reserve officers association was established in 1922 and it acts in advising the white house, congress, and public on national security issues. it should get underway in just a moment, live here on c-span2. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> may have your attention? just reminder to turn off your cell phones. we will begin in approximately 30 seconds, or now. thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> well, good morning all. i trust we ha

the assad regime, in a letter which general martin dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs, sent to carl levinited states congress a couple of months ago, he spoke out that fully to do that would involve hundreds of ships and aircraft and thousands of ground troops at the cost of $1 billion a month. could the prime minister since he's not proposing that say what his objective would be in terms of degrading the chemical weapons capability. >> i think of course there are many jobs, home secretary, foreign secretary, perhaps i should refer to him as my constituent. perhaps a safer way, he makes a good point. he makes a very good point which is what i think the dempsey letter was addressing was that if you wanted entirely to dismantle or attempt to dismantle syria's weapons arsenal, that would be an enormous undertaking that would involve grand troops, involve all sorts -- that is not what is being proposed. what is being proposed were we it take part is an attempt to deter and to degrade the future use. that is very different. and you would do that. i don't want to set out at the dispatch box at

carl levin said he wanted to see the president do more to seek international support.bviously the british pulled out of any coalition with a vote in their parliament. years, thisn recent is going to be something the president is ultimately going to make a decision on because the congress is not going to speak with one clear voice on what he should do. >> jonathan allen is politicos white house journal chief. twitter on ourn question of what does the public need to know on military decisions, i'm just not sure why the public should know anything about military decisions except what they were and the final outcome. fromer tweet this morning on -- one last one from ron this morning. the public needs to know what should be clear is in the fog of war, indisputable evidence isn't always indisputable. dems should learn something from this. next we have that from decatur, georgia. (202) 628-0205 > (202) 737-0001 >> we fly off to war, no, there are too many things here that needs to be taken care of. >> if the president is going to do something, what do you need to see from him

meanwhile, carl levin issuing a statement reading in part by the way, that report that was issued today from the white house on the report, the use of chemical weapons in syria is available on our homepage at c- span.org. facebook.comgo to /cspan and leave your thoughts. another view saying we should help jordan with their refugee problems and keep the trade routes open. the rest is bluster. again, facebook.com/c-span. you can also call in on the next washington journal with michael hirsch joining us tomorrow. he will be discussing the latest developments from syria. talksthat, damien paletta about the upcoming debate between the white house and congress over the debt limit. in mid-october, the government reaches its debt ceiling. " tomorrown journal morning at 7:00 a.m. eastern. >> the ark of the moral universe may bend towards justice, but it doesn't bend on its own. to secure the gains this country has made requires constant vigilance, not complacency. whether it is by challenging those who erect new barriers to help for ensuring that these carols -- the scales of justice were equall

delighted to have terrific last-minute add to senator carl th levin, who you all know is the armed n of the senate services committee. he's the senator from michigan. is our michigan delegation? here are some michiganders here, senator. graduate of swarthmore and harvard law school. elected to the senate in 1978 and has been re-elected every since.ars he's also on the permanent ubcommittee on investigations of the homeland security and governmental affairs committee. of 006 he was named one "time" magazine's 10 best senators. host of awards including the franklin and eleanor roosevelt foundation for freedom medal, global service from the world affairs council. he holds the secretary of the navy's distinguished public medal, which is a big deal actually. national guard association and u.s.s. harry s. award. without further ado, senator levin. >> thank you so much for the for the ion and invitation to join with you this morning. a real honor to be with for your y thank you service, current and past, and a fewre and a few as well. as you know as well as anybody we face challenges around

while we seek international support, in response to the asad that is from carl levin, the chairman ofed services committee. he is on the white house conference call this evening. ago, asn, a short while the meeting was going on at the white house, the house of commons defeated the government proposal by a vote of 285-272. a motion for military action against syria sponsored by the cameron administration. show you that debate from earlier today. the business of the house mission. mission number one. the leader of the house to move the motion. thank you. say aye. the aye's have it. we now come to the motion in the name of the prime minister relating to syria and the use of chemical weapons. the text of the motion submitted yesterday as it appears on the order paper was incorrect. a few words were omitted from line 16. as these are purely factual, the motion should be moved in a corrected form. a copy of the motion in its corrected form is available in the vote office. i can inform the house that i have selected manuscript amendment b submitted this morning by a member of the leading opp

action would be degrading, his words, of chemical weapons capability of thes a sad -- s-- sent to carl levin the united states congress he fully to do that would involve hundred of ships and aircraft at the cost to $1 billion a month. could the prime minister simply not proposing that say what is objective in term of degrading the chemical weapon capability? >> i think have any jobs -- [inaudible] refer to my constituents as -- [laughter] he makes a very good point. he makes a very good point, which is i think he was addressing if you wanted entirely to dismantle or attempt to dismantle syria's weapons, that would be an enormous undertaking that would involve troops that involve all sorts -- that is not what is being proposed. what is being proposed were we to take part is an attempt to deter and grade the future you saw. that's very different. and you would do that i don't want to set out at the dispatch of the house of commons a list of targets perfectly simple straightforward to think of actions you could take to do a command and control of the use of chemical weapons, and the people and

also, i was just wondering if i'll be able to vote for you for carl levin's senate seat? >> i can't talk about campaign issues at this town all. >> that's a secret, right? >> let me go in the back there. >> [inaudible] >> any topic you want. >> i'll just say, i went to the hospital recently. we had to go to two different hospitals and one -- the next one took them. but we ended up sitting in the waiting room watching the entire movies of cars before they even helped us. we have four different people come in and ask the exact same question. fill out all the paperwork. one sitting and watching my son scream because he got bit by a dog. i him in a situation where i kind of want to buy a book and learn how to do it in stages so i don't have to deal with this. i'm wondering of what point we just abolish the federal government? [applause] >> the federal government has an important role, and and you have to follow what the constitution says. there are enumerated powers for congress in the constitution. and most of those relate to national defense and that's what the federal gove