here in new york, senior fellow at stanford's hoover institution and christopher dickey, the mideast itor for news week and the daily beast. i'm looking at you christopher. you called this deal a diplomatic breakthrough and israel is the big winner here. we have not heard, i haven't, from a lot of people say thg is a diplomatic breakthrough. they are saying oh my gosh, the u.s. is eliminating power in the middle east. >> i don't get that. it reminds me of george w. bush, threatened war, said the international community had to meet their responsibilities to disarm saddam. he shook things up. we had inspectors going into iraq and a lot of stuff happening. the difference then and now is george w. bush wanted to invade iraq and obama does not want to invade syria. there's that. the main thing is, even though it's been a mad scramble, you can't say they have looked organized in this whole effort. at the end of the day, they threatened force and they got what they said they were threatening force to achieve, which was to get chemical weapons taken out. >> you say they don't look organized.

find your perfect match at kp.org and thrive. >>> my thanks to christopher dickey, christiane amanpourullivan, charles blow. that's all the time we have for this edition of "ac 360 later." see you again tomorrow at 8:00 eastern for "ac 360 crisis ." jake tapper is next. >>> tonight a special hour of cnn. >> this is not a game. >> last chance. if syria doesn't want american missiles falling on it from the sky, this might be it. and the u.s. has to trust the russians to make it happen. but is the u.s. getting played? >> it is clear that president putin has invested his credibility. >> has he? what international credibility does russia's president actually have? would h

also christopher dickey for "newsweek" and "the daily beast." david, let me start with you.ad moving the weapons around, are you suspicious of this? and, if so, why? >> i think everyone would be. the optics certainly don't look good. and if anyone had been giving assad advice, and that includes the russians, they should have told him not to do it now. it strengthens the french and the u.s. belief that any resolution from the security council must have chapter seven as a sanction if they don't cooperate. now, there is a missing piece of information, which the u.s. government should have. that is were they moving the weapons from well-known large chemical weapons storage facilities to some place else? or were they moving them from small sites into these larger assembly sites which would tell you maybe they're doing it, in fact, consolidate so they can declare what they have easier and they can be inspected easier? but on the surface of it is all you can say is it looks like ropodaope cat and mouse and cheat and retreat which we've been through with saddam. >> you're talking ab

amanpour, charles blow, and later in the fifth chair writer, one of the best in the business christopher dickey joins us as well. a lot to talk about. what do you make of what came out of what we know came out of the talks today? >> well, i think that secretary kerry gave a very stern, stiff and serious declaration at the beginning, going into the meeting with sergei lavrov. he said this has to be serious we're not playing around here. it has to be credible, timely. we're not going to wait forever to see whether assad is going to play ball. it has to be verifiable and has to have consequences if assad reanything and if the russians don't keep him on the straight and narrow. assad himself gave an interview to russian television today where he basically admitted he had chemical weapons. >> also in that interview, which to me that's the headline of this interview that he gave. he said not only does the threat of military forces have to be off the table but the international community cannot arm the rebels. >> this is the thing. that's why secretary kerry has to negotiate very hard in that room wit

amanpour, charles blow, and later in the fifth chair writer, one of the best in the business christopher dickey joins us as well. a lot to talk about. what do you make of what came out of what we know came out of the talks today? >> well, i think that secretary kerry gave a very stern, stiff and serious declaration at the beginning, going into the meeting with sergei lavrov. he said this has to be serious we're not playing around here. it has to be credible, timely. we're not going to wait forever to see whether assad is going to play ball. it has to be verifiable and has to have consequences if assad reanything and if the russians don't keep him on the straight and narrow. assad himself gave an interview to russian television today where he basically admitted he had chemical weapons. >> also in that interview, which to me that's the headline of this interview that he gave. he said not only does the threat of military forces have to be off the table but the international community cannot arm the rebels. >> this is the thing. that's why secretary kerry has to negotiate very hard in that room wit

>>> my thanks to christopher dickey, christiane amanpour, andrew sullivan, charles blow. that's all the time we have for this edition of "ac 360 later." see you again tomorrow at 8:00 eastern for "ac 360 crisis ." jake tapper is next. >>> tonight a special hour of cnn. >> this is not a game. >> last chance. if syria doesn't want american missiles falling on it from the sky, this might be it. and the u.s. has to trust the russians to make it happen. but is the u.s. getting played? >> it is clear that president putin has invested his credibility. >> has he? what international credibility does russia's president actually have? would he care if he lost it? >> we got a lot more stuff to do here in this government. >> president obama ready to move on? he lets his proxies respond after president putin antagonizes the u.s. with unsolicited advice on syria. who is calling the shots here? this is "crisis in syria decision point." >>> good evening. welcome to this special hour of cnn "crisis in syria decision point." already morning in geneva, switzerland where secretary of state jo

series of panels that will join us throughout the evening, and our great panelists right now is christopher dickey who has spent a lot of time in the middle east. carly solis and hillary man man leverett. she's the author of "going to tehran." one thing the president repeated over and over, chris, is the importance of not letting tyrants get away with using weapons of mass destruction. we have seen a long history of getting away with mass destruction goes back to saddam hussein and how he gassed kurds in iraq. there was by some accounts as many as 31 prior uses of chemical weapons in syria. why now? >> well, i think, first of all, you need to understand something. you can look at sad da -- saddam hussein as one example. it's not just that they kill people and hurt something, especially something like sarin, it's odorless and colorless. you can't breathe and you're con vulsing. it has a horrible effect. when saddam hussein used them against the kurds in 1988 he killed maybe 5,000 people. three years later in 1991 he didn't have to use them to terrorize hundreds of thousands of people and drive them

. >> joining me now is christopher dickey and kimberly dozier. good to have you here. e yesterday and i want to talk about what you said after president obama's statement. we should all be relieved for now. >> i think the president felt strongly that he was being stampeded by his own remarks and the way the press and congress were talking about this question of red lines. if an attack begins, it's not going to end there. there will be retaliation by assad. there will be ratcheting up of the conflict. he doesn't want to get into that vortex of conflict and war without much more support and much more deliberation than he had. what i think your reporting shows now is putting his ducks in a row. he wants congress onboard. he won't to get the international community onboard in way it wasn't before. he'll do that at the g-20 and the general assembly. we may see movement in britain and we'll see support of france. he can have a lot more things and more elements in place two weeks from now or three weeks from now than if he went to war this weekend. >> kimberly, this is what yo

i want to talk about potential lessons with christopher dickey, the editor for the news week and dailyou on. obviously, i read your piece this morning and i want to quote you from the daily beast. heightening the risk is the fact that al qaeda affiliates under pressure today, no longer feel compelled to carry out such massive, complicated operations as 9/11. they know they can command the world tfs attention with much smaller attacks. you go on to say, you know, what happened in the shopping mall may be a taste of things to come in the u.s. how do you mean? >> well, first of all, i think you have to understand that although there are liocal agends for grouped like al shabaab. when they sign on as affiliates of al qaeda, they basically are signing on to a global ideology in which the united states ranks as the number one enemy. and there are certain cities like new york city, that are usually the number one targets for such people. so i think that the risk increases right there. just because of that idealogical framework, but also because in the case of al shabaab, as i think you have p

. >>> up next, we will talk to christopher dickey the mid-east editor for the news week and daily beastee authorize military action in syria. joining us to talk about it is chris dickey the news editor at the daily beast. when the president said he was seeking congress's authority. you said he was averting a crisis for now. what happens if congress actually passes the? >> well, i think the senate resolution gives us a kind of an outlook for the war we had, which is an air war that could last 60 or 90 days and is a pretty dramatic event. it's in the just a symbolic gesture, one of those one or two or stwle day air operations like we sometimes saw in the ''80sment this is going to be a full fledged air war, it looks like, i think it's going to have very unpredictable results. it could lead bashar al-assad to go to the negotiating table. but it could also create millions more refugees and thousands more dead in the situation that's already extremely volatile. >> we know about a lot of the potential problems that would arise and serious issues that would come up. what's the best case scenar