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no bull, and the aftermath Hello and welcome to the LawFair podcast. I'm Wells Bennett. This

Thursday, Brookings hosted an event entitled Striking Syria, Obama, Congress, and Military

Action. During the discussion, which was led by Brookings as Michael O'Hanland, a panel

of scholars debated the president's planned intervention and asked whether it makes sense,

legally, strategically, and morally.

Well, good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for being here to discuss Syria through no

fault of her own and because of the last minute arrangements here, Fiona Hill is still

on her way down, so we'll have her come in in just a second, but she doesn't need to

hear herself or my other colleagues introduced, so I'll begin. I'm Michael O'Hanland, senior

fellow here at Brookings and delighted to be joined by all of you today, but also by a

distinguished lineup of my colleagues to discuss the important issue of what we should do

about Syria, and specifically the response or any possible response to the August 21st

tragedy during which chemical weapons appeared to have been used by President Assad's forces

against population centers in parts of Damascus. But of course, more generally, the conflict

in a broader sense will also be fair game for our initial discussion and then for your

questions. But I'd like to do after just saying a brief word of welcome and introduction

about each of my colleagues is to begin with a question or two for each, largely designed

to illuminate or to bring out areas of their respective expertise, but also to get some

different viewpoints on the table. And then we will maybe speak a little bit amongst

...