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Amanpour

Washington Follies: The World Watches; Syrian General Refused to Use Chemical Weapons; Imagine a World

Aired October 01, 2013 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.

Now if you're an alien, you might well wonder what's happened to the human race today, or at least those humans that are manning the halls of the United States Congress.

Indeed, it took an unmanned vehicle outside our solar system to best sum up our sorry state. This is what the Voyager 2 spacecraft tweeted from outer space. "Due to government shutdown, we will not be posting or responding from this account. Farewell, humans. Sort it out yourselves."

And so worried is the Obama administration about sorting this out that it decided to control the message. The order has come down from on high that no U.S. ambassador can explain or speak publicly about this to a quizzical world.

And so it's up to us. And we'll try our best.

Of course, if we were covering some of the far-flung failing states that we often do, we'd know just how to put it. The Capitol's rival plans find themselves at an impasse, unable to agree on a measure that will allow the American state to carry out its most basic functions, the current crisis has raised questions in the international community about the regime's ability to govern this complex nation of 300 million people.

Well, that was, in fact, a satirical blog today for the online magazine, "Slate." But of course this isn't funny and nor is America a banana republic. It's only the global superpower, the world's biggest economy and the dollar is the currency of global trade, of course.

The cost to the U.S. economy of this shutdown is yet to be determined. But what about the unseen costs, to Brand USA? Not to mention already the million U.S. government workers on unpaid leave, the medical research projects that are shut down, as well as national parks, like Yosemite, which brings in $350 million to the local economy every year.

Even PandaCam at Washington National Zoo is dark.

Now the polls agree that the American people are disgusted at this shutdown. Just look at the front page of this New York newspaper, a tabloid. All of this because of 30 hardline Republicans who refuse to budge.

So is this the new normal? I'm joined now by Ryan Lizza, who's the Washington correspondent of "The New Yorker" magazine and here in London by broadcaster and publisher Andrew Neil.

Gentlemen, thank you for joining me.

Let me ask you first, Andrew, how is the world reacting to this in Britain today?

ANDREW NEIL, BRITISH BROADCASTER AND PUBLISHER: I think the rest of the world thinks it's so incredible they don't quite believe it. You know, we're used to dysfunctional governments in Italy or Greece or some banana republic.

But on a basic function of government to set tax and spend and agree a budget, the fact the United States can't do that, people don't quite believe it; so they've not yet faced up to the consequences that could follow.

AMANPOUR: And what about you, Ryan? Is there any silver lining to any of this? You saw that pretty pointed "Daily News" front page. People are disgusted.

Is this something that's going to pass?

Are they going to reach their senses in a day or two?

RYAN LIZZA, "THE NEW YORKER" MAGAZINE: I think it's very hard to predict exactly what's going to happen. And a lot of us have just been wrong in predicting exactly how the House Republicans would navigate this crisis before.

So it's dangerous.

I think, you know, is there a silver lining? I hate to say this, but I think one outcome of things backfiring on the folks who brought us to this point is that perhaps this ends the cycle of budgeting and governing by fiscal crisis.

Don't forget, in less than two weeks, we have a much, much more significant deadline coming up here. And that is the government is going to run out of its borrowing authority unless Congress acts affirmatively.

So we have two major crises right on top of each other. I think some folks think that this has to end badly for the side that got us into this place for us to not be in this point, just in a few more weeks.

AMANPOUR: Let me just put up these polls, then, because the American people are squarely blaming the Congress and the Republicans.

Seventy-two percent of the people oppose a shutdown; only 22 percent support it. When it comes to the debt ceiling, 64 percent of the American people would oppose any blocking of that, of raising that.

And when it comes to gridlock in Washington, 55 percent blame Congress; 33 percent blame President Obama.

So Andrew Neil, the real looming disaster could be this debt ceiling debacle. We've seen it a couple of years ago. America has never faulted on that. It may have shut down the government, but it hasn't done this.

NEIL: And that's when the ridicule of the rest of the world will turn to anger, because it's not just Americans that's going to have to live with this. If the debt ceiling isn't agreed, the new one isn't fixed, there is a strong possibility, indeed, even a probability, that the U.S. will default on its bonds. It won't have money to service its debt.

Now the U.S. bonds are by far the most important in the world. They're the benchmark for the rest of borrowing in the world. If America, of all countries, can't service it, we are potentially into a financial crisis much bigger than the one sparked off by Lehman Brothers and that's when the rest of us begin to suffer and not just the Americans.

AMANPOUR: And you know what, that is what sends shivers up my spine today. I heard somebody say precisely that, that this could trigger a 2008-style financial crisis.

Now, you know, I want to play you both two little pieces of interviews that -- or speeches that both the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, said last night and President Obama also in a radio interview. I want you to listen to this about the negotiations or lack thereof over the current crisis.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN BOEHNER, SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I talked to the president earlier tonight. I'm not going to negotiate. I'm not going to negotiate. I'm not going to do this. Well, I would say to the president, this is not about me. And it's not about Republicans here in Congress. It's about the fairness for the American people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

OBAMA: I shouldn't have to offer anything. They're not doing me a favor by paying for things that they have already approved for the government to do. That's part of their basic function of government . That's not doing me a favor.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Ryan Lizza, the president is being criticized for not negotiating and for sounding kind of petulant in this regard.

On the other hand, ObamaCare is his signature legislation and it's merely bringing, you know, America's health situation fairly in line with the rest of the world.

Who is, do you think, not negotiating correctly?

LIZZA: Well, look, you know, in our business, Christiane, it's really comfortable for us as reporters to have two sides to blame equality, that Republicans are doing this and Democrats are doing this and, you know, you, the public, make up your minds.

I genuinely don't think that that's the case here. This crisis is the result of about 80 Republicans forcing a course of action on the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, a course of action that he publicly said he did not want to go down.

Boehner said he did not want to threaten a government shutdown based on trying to defund ObamaCare. Eighty very conservative Republicans, who won their districts by an average of 34 points, in other words, they don't care about Democrats opposing them; they only care about Republicans primarying them, they forced Boehner to do this

And remember what the crisis is here: it's just -- it's just a continuing resolution. It's just legislation that funds the government at current levels. They could have passed something that funded the government for another week as they negotiated some of these other issues.

So in that sense, there's no reason for the government to shut down. So when the president says, look, that policy is in place; this is their basic responsibility, I think he's got a decent point there.

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: Well, let me put this to Andrew. Let me put this to Andrew because he may have a decent point, but also when it comes to the substance, Andrew, you know, we live here, across this country, across the rest of Europe. People believe they have a right to health care and they have it.

NEIL: Of course. But the issue isn't really health care. It's much more fundamental than that. There's two that have happened. Americans love their Constitution. They think it's one of the greatest political constructions the world has ever known. And it is.

But it has this complicated system of checks and balances which, if it doesn't operate, leads to a rigor mortis that would be inconceivable in a parliamentary democracy like Germany or the United Kingdom. And this rigor mortis happens when you look at what's happened to American political culture. They don't want a compromise. They don't want to agree. They hate each other.

Now I was a White House correspondent when Tip O'Neill was the big enchilada in Congress and President Reagan was in the White House, a liberal Democrat and of the Boston machine, and a radical Republican from California, none of this ever happened because they had a basic respect for each other and they knew they had to compromise in the end.

That doesn't happen in a clash of America's Constitution and this rather toxic political culture has made America at the moment a dysfunctional democracy.

AMANPOUR: Well, and this 18 years ago was the shutdown of the government, the last time around, and actually it was Newt Gingrich, who was then Speaker of the House, and others have said that it was actually Gingrich who started this politics of zero-sum game, the politics of, you know, I have to kill my opponent and this extremism.

NEIL: Well, and of course, much good did it do him in the end, because the Republicans took a hammering after that. They got blamed for it.

But if you're going to have a system and parliamentary democracy where an overall majority means you can do what you want, that's fine. That's the way we run our system. If you're going to have a system of complicated checks and balances, then compromise and give-and-take has to be built into the system.

And the political culture is such in America at the moment that it's not -- and this is a systemic problem and it's not going to go away. This will happen again. I mean it's already in 30 years we've had 18 kind of incidents like this. And you know, America's good at lecturing the rest of the world of governance. I think the rest of the world is either going to give America a few lectures on governance.

AMANPOUR: And let me talk to Ryan now about that, because is there a way out of this?

And is there potentially a group of Republicans who might have some kind of insurgency?

And I say that because there was a tweet today by someone who's described as a moderate Republican, Scott Rigell, Republican, saying, "We fought the good fight. Time for a clean C.R.," continuing resolution, to keep this government functioning.

Is that happening? Is this the first time, perhaps, some moderates or others in the Congress are going to take on the Tea Party?

LIZZA: Well ,they tried that yesterday, actually. They tried to ,on the last vote last night, to 17 or 18 of them tried to get together to force -- to force exactly that, a clean C.R. And half of them gave up at the end.

The truth is, the Republican Party is very homogenous right now and there are very few moderates in the party.

What a lot of people think is that Boehner has to show his conservative right flank that this plan is backfiring spectacularly and that's the only way that he can sell them on the -- on the policy course, which is the only way out of this, which is to pass a clean C.R. and use a mix of Democratic and Republican votes in the House to push that through and then move on to the next crisis.

AMANPOUR: He's also --

(CROSSTALK)

LIZZA: But I agree with Andrew; the problem is -- the problem is in our system, if you don't have a willingness to compromise, it doesn't work. And right now on the far right flank of the Republican Party, the idea of compromise itself is opposed.

AMANPOUR: And Boehner is criticized for not even bringing this to a vote. Some say it may actually win because all the Democrats would vote it and maybe some Republicans.

NEIL: Yes, but, you know, I spent six weeks with the Tea Party a couple of years ago. They're irreconcilables on this thing. They ain't going to give in. And Mr. Boehner doesn't control them. Indeed, they despise him. They despise him almost as much as they despise President Obama.

And if you've got a group like this that is determined to get its own way and not going to give in, here's what's going to happen. Remember the mouth from the South, the man that was President Clinton's famous spin doctor.

What he was asked, what would you like to come back as, he said, "I want to come back as the bond markets." And if this lot don't sort it out in Washington, the bond markets will take over. And you do not want to be on the wrong end of the bond markets.

AMANPOUR: Do they get that, Ryan? Do they get that in Congress? Do they care what's happening in the rest of the world?

LIZZA: I was going to say that a second ago. If you look at -- if you look at the 80 Republicans who forced this course of action, they come basically from where you'd expect, right, the South, the Midwest and the rural West.

They're not in places with major cities and they're not -- they're not representatives who were elected because of their foreign policy credentials or because of their interest in international economics.

And frankly, if you read the conservative press closely, there's an argument that has taken hold among some of these folks that a default on the debt would not be as catastrophes as most people would think it would be.

And there are some people who think that it would be a -- I know this is crazy to say, but that it would be a good thing, that it would finally force a conversation about spending. And that's probably the most dangerous argument that has taken root.

AMANPOUR: Playing with fire, Ryan Lizza, thank you very much for joining me from Washington.

Andrew Neil, thanks for being with me here in the studio.

AMANPOUR: And meanwhile, another crisis continues in Syria. Despite a determination to destroy the Assad regime's stockpile of chemical weapons, that might be easier said than done, says the general who once was ordered to use those weapons. He's no longer fighting for Assad, but he knows where the bodies -- or the bombs -- are buried. That's when we come back.

And if you're staggered by the unfinished business in the United States, take heart from a project in Spain that's over 100 years in the making. Sagrada Familia, the ornate Barcelona cathedral, designed by the renowned architect Antoni Gaudi, was begun in 1882. And it's scheduled for completion in 2026. This amazing animation gives a glimpse of what to expect.

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back.

A team of disarmament experts have arrived in Syria to begin work on dismantling the country's stockpile of chemical weapons. So far, they say that meetings with the Syrian government have been, quote, "efficient," and President Bashar al-Assad himself insists that he'll comply with the U.S.- Russian plan which is now backed up by United Nations resolution.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BASHAR AL-ASSAD, SYRIAN PRESIDENT: In 2003, we had proposed (inaudible) Security Council to get rid of those weapons in the Middle East, to have a chemical weapon-free zone in the Middle East. So of course, we have to comply. This is (inaudible) comply with every treaty we sign.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: But still there's plenty of skepticism that Assad will be fully forthcoming. Earlier, I spoke to General Zaher al-Sakat. He was in Assad's army, but he defected this past March when he says that he was ordered by the chemical weapons unit commander to use those weapons against civilians.

He told me that he refused and that he buried the substance and replaced it with a harmless but strong-smelling chemical cleaning agent.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: General al-Sakat, welcome. Thanks for joining me. Let me start by asking you, do you believe that Bashar al-Assad will disarm? He has said again today that he will comply with the U.N.-Russia-U.S. plan.

GEN. ZAHER AL-SAKAT, SYRIAN DEFECTOR (through translator): The locations of the most of the scientific research centers in Syria and the storage facilities are known and under surveillance. That he will give up those centers and facilities for sure without lying. That said, however, Bashar al-Assad will not give up the chemical stockpile.

There are four secret locations inside Syria. While in the meantime there are current transfer of chemical weapons to Hezbollah and Iraq, and from there to Iran.

This was detected by the security intelligence apparatus of the revolution inside Syria, which is headed by a man who is known as Abu Mohammed al-Aktahud (ph).

He is the head of the security unit that monitors all the locations of the chemical weapons of the Syrian regime.

AMANPOUR: General, you are now saying that these weapons have been moved around? General Salim Idris told me that they had been taken into Iraq and into Lebanon, but the Lebanese and the Iraqis deny that categorically. Where are these weapons being moved to?

AL-SAKAT (through translator): First of all, the observations of the movement on the ground which I completely know of, we monitored 28 large trucks moving from Judaydat Yabus toward Lebanon, then to Hezbollah, which were heavily guarded.

They also found in the Fratluse (ph) area more than 50 large Mercedes and Volvo trucks also heavily guarded, moving in the direction of Iraq. The trucks were not intercepted or attacked so as not to spread chemical weapons or agents in the area, which would harm the local populations.

AMANPOUR: So just to confirm, you're saying that the regime is moving these weapons towards the border but not into Iraq or Lebanon?

AL-SAKAT (through translator): No, toward the borders. What I am saying is that we think that those trucks went to Iraq; this is our assumption. The rebels saw the secret units 416, 417 and 418, which are in charge of guarding the chemical weapons or 30 trucks moving in the direction of the Iraqi borders.

They're across the Iraqi borders or not? We are not sure of that.

But when the trucks crossed the Lebanese borders, we were sure that it went to Hezbollah.

AMANPOUR: General Sakat, what is it that you were ordered to do when you were in the unit that was responsible for the regime's chemical weapons?

AL-SAKAT (through translator): In the beginning of the protests, a few commanders used non-lethal chemical harassing agents, such as chloride- based chemicals without using the more dangerous agents.

But when I was given the order by my immediate commander, Lt. Gen. Ali Hassan Amar (ph), the commander of the 5th Division, to use lethal chemical agents, I replaced it with a diluted bleach and buried those lethal agents in the ground.

AMANPOUR: General Sakat, were you ordered to use chemical weapons against residents in Syria? And if so, who ordered you to do that?

AL-SAKAT (through translator): First, we should distinguish between three kinds of chemical weapons. First, the non-lethal harassing agents that were used in the beginning of the protests and were fired by automatic weapons and bombs to disperse the protesters.

Two, the incapacitating agents that were used in land mines, which would produce a cloud of gas that spreads in an area, harming civilians.

Three, lethal agents, such as the sarin and VX gas were used and loaded into mortar shells, Cruz missiles and weapons base of fighter jets. I was given an order to use the number two stage of chemical weapons. And I knew then that this regime would end up using lethal chemical weapons against the civilians; therefore, I defected.

AMANPOUR: Was it sarin you were asked to -- were you ordered --

AL-SAKAT (through translator): The name of it is phosgene.

We used these lethal agents inside a bombshell filled with explosives, would then blow it up so as poisonous cloud goes towards the innocent civilians. This is the truth. Many of my colleagues used this agent a lot in many areas of Syria.

AMANPOUR: I want to know who ordered you to use it?

Was it President Assad? Or a commander? Who was it?

AL-SAKAT (through translator): I said the decision to use the lethal chemical weapons such as sarin, VX and iprik (ph) is a strategic military decision that would be made by the commander in chief of the armed forces, who is Bashar al-Assad. He is the commander in chief.

As far as the harassing agents, as I have mentioned, they are the prerogative of the field commander, as with the incapacitating agents, which take the fighters out of the battle, I was given the order by my commander of the 5th Division, Lt. Gen. Ali Hassan Amar (ph), who later was awarded for killing the unarmed civilians by giving him the command of the Republican Guards.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: That was General al-Sakat.

And after a break, while the United States Congress gives new meaning to debacle, imagine a world where Italy can keep a government together for more than nine months. If you said that unimaginable, you'd be right. Turmoil on the Tiber when we come back.

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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, in case you thought the United States was the only country flailing and failing at governing itself, imagine a world where the government can fall at the whim of a 77-year-old convict.

Italy, which held its umpteenth election just nine months ago, teeters now on the brink of political chaos yet again, following a power play by the former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. This past weekend, five members of Berlusconi's People of Liberty Party, a name only George Orwell could love withdrew from the fragile coalition government, forcing a vote of confidence on Wednesday.

Berlusconi, the septuagenarian Caesar who refuses to fall on his sword, lays the blame on a proposed increase in Italy's value-added tax. Still, others say that he crossed the Rubicon to prevent a vote that could actually banish him from the Senate after he was sentenced to jail for tax fraud.

In the ignoble tradition of the emperor Caligula, who made his horse a Roman senator, Berlusconi has once again turned the Italian government into a three-ring political circus maximus. And today we'll follow that confidence vote in parliament, and we'll explore its implications, not only for Italy but for all of Europe as well.

And that's it for our program tonight. Remember, you can always contact us at amanpour.com. Goodbye from London.

END