appropriate response to alleged breaches of international law or discuss this i am joined by stephen schlesinger political commentator and author of the book act of creation the founding of the united nations stephen welcome to the show thank you for having me now i want to sort off by playing a clip of what senator rand paul told r.t. yesterday about how he thinks congress is getting duped by the white house take a look part of the problem here though is in my biggest complain about it is you know i want to be proud of the president for bringing this forward but then they say well they won't adamantly say they're going to adhere to congressional verdict so is the vote just feed or is it just pretend and that's a pretty important thing if the president wants credit for believing in current question authority and coming forward with us he needs to say yes the binding absolutely i would never go to war if i lose the vote but it's telling that they're not willing to say that we think stephen do you think this is all theater in a way. no i think that the president genuinely wants the support of cong

getting involved in this sort of civil war in toppling the government but we're out of time stephen schlesinger political commentator and author of act of creation thank you thank you one word we've heard used by the president again and again when discussing military options in syria is the word proportional as in there needs to be a proportional response to syrian president bashar al assad's alleged use of chemical weapons what exactly does a proportional u.s. response mean especially when syria hasn't actually attacked the us artie's this wall with more. over one hundred thousand dad and a bloody syrian civil war a chemical attack blamed on the assad government appears to be a rat line the military plan that has been developed by our joint chiefs and that i believe is appropriate is proportional it is limited in this case the administration sees proportional as limited in. sir vention through airstrikes no boots on the ground with the goal of deterring assad from using chemical weapons regime change according to the administration is not the goal if i is arrogant enough and i would say foolis