Syrian leader gives interview to PBS reporter, who says he suggested 'some kind of retaliation if a strike was made' 
 
 The Syrian president, Bashar Assad, has said there is no evidence he is responsible for the deadly gas attacks the US government claims left 1,429 people dead, including 426 children. 
 
 In an exclusive interview secured by Charlie Rose of PBS, Assad said: "There has been no evidence that I used chemical weapons against my own people." 
 
 Assad refused to confirm or deny that he had chemical weapons but said if he did, they were under "centralized control". 
 
 The interview will air in its entirety on PBS on Monday night, as president Barack Obama is due to sit down with six television networks for recorded interviews and press his case for a targeted attack on Syria. 
 
 Rose said Assad "does accept some of the responsibility" for the attack. He said: "I asked that very question: 'Do you feel any remorse?' He said, 'Of course I do,' but it did not come in a way that was sort of deeply felt inside. It was much more of a calm recitation of anybody who's a leader of a country would feel terrible about what's happened to its citizens." 
 
 Rose said Assad "suggested that there would be, among people that are aligned with him, some kind of retaliation if a strike was made". Assad, however, "would not even talk about the nature of the response". 
 
 Rose said: "He had a message to the American people that it had not been a good experience for them to get involved in the Middle East in wars and conflicts … that the results had not been good." 
 
 Later on Sunday, US secretary of state John Kerry was reported to have dismissed Assad's claim there is no evidence he used chemical weapons against his own people, saying "the evidence speaks for itself". The remark was reported by a US reporter attending a photo session in London, as Kerry prepared to meet the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to discuss the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. 
 
 Earlier in the day, the White House asserted that "common sense" proved Assad's government was responsible for the chemical attacks in Syria as the US weighs military action. Chief of staff Denis McDonough told NBC's Meet The Press there was "no question in my mind" that Assad had ordered the 21 August attack, outside Damascus. 
 
 Obama will set out his case for a strike against Assad in a speech from the White House on Tuesday, amid signs that a majority in the House of Representatives are against intervention. 
 
 McDonough told CNN's State of the Union that the evidence available so far showed Assad was to blame. "The material was used in the eastern suburbs of Damascus, that have been controlled by the opposition for some time," he said. "It was delivered by rockets, rockets that we know the Assad regime has and we have no indication that the opposition has." 
 
 With video of the consequences of the attack, McDonough said all this added up to "a quite strong common sense test irrespective of the intelligence that suggests the regime carried this out". 
 
 McDonough said "nobody doubts the intelligence". "The question for Congress this week is what are the consequences for having done so," he said, on Meet The Press, adding that Congress's decision would be watched closely by Iran and Hezbollah. "This is an opportunity to be bold with the Iranians." he said. "To make sure they understand that they do not have greater freedom of action, they do not have greater operating space to pursue a nuclear weapon that would destabilize that entire region, threaten our friends and allies and ultimately threaten us." 
 
 The United Nations is currently investigating the 21 August attack. Speaking in Paris this weekend, secretary of state Kerry said said he planned to discuss whether to wait for the UN findings with Obama, adding that the president had not decided on the matter. 
 
 White House chief-of-staff Denis McDonough speaks to Bob Schieffer on CBS. Photograph: Chris Usher/AP 
 
 McDonough said: "Obviously we are interested in what the UN inspectors have to say." But he added that the UN is "not going to be able to tell us, because their mandate will not allow them to tell us, who is responsible for the attack … We are right now focused on Washington … the president ultimately is going to make this decision in consultation with Congress on our timeline as best suits our interests." 
 
 On ABC's This Week, McDonough said the US was considering a "targeted, consequential, limited attack against Assad forces and Assad capabilities so that he is deterred from carrying out these actions again. 
 
 "Here is what it is not. It is not boots on the ground. It is not an extended air campaign. It is not Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya. This is a very concentrated, limited effort that we can carry out and that can underscore and secure our interests." 
 
 Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican and chairman of the House homeland security committee, gave voice to Congressional opposition to strikes on Syria when he told Meet The Press: "The problem is I think lobbing a few Tomahawk missiles will not restore our credibility overseas. It's kind of a face-saving measure for the president after he drew the red line. 
 
 "Little wars start big wars and we have to remember that. Who are we supporting in this war? We are supporting a rebel faction, a rebel cause, that has now been infiltrated and hijacked by many al-Qaida factions." 
 
 McCaul said there was a risk that chemical weapons could end up in the hands of al-Qaida operatives after a US attack. McCaul said, "ironically", that Congress had been debating its next step in Syria on the eve of 9/11. 
 
 McCaul also said that while images of victims of the gas attacks were "horrific" and Assad was "a brutal dictator", "I don't want to see those images broadcast in the United States with American kids." ||||| President Bashar Assad warned Sunday that if President Obama decides to launch military strikes on Syria, the U.S. and its allies should "expect every action" in retaliation. 
 
 "You should expect everything. Not necessarily from the government," Assad told "CBS This Morning" co-host Charlie Rose in his first television interview since Mr. Obama sought congressional approval for military action. 
 
 If U.S. strikes Syria, what happens next? 
 
 Chemical weapons attack in Syria 
 
 In a clear reference to his allies in Iran and the Islamic militant group Hezbollah, Assad warned that his government is "not the only player in this region." 
 
 "You have different parties, you have different factions, you have different ideology. You have everything in this region now," said Assad, who has been accused by the White House of killing 1,400 of his own people in an Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack on the Damascus suburbs. 
 
 Asked by Rose whether any retaliation for U.S. strikes could include the use of chemical weapons, Assad -- whose government has never confirmed officially that it even has chemical weapons -- said it would depend "if the rebels or the terrorists in this region or any other group have it. It could happen, I don't know. I am not fortune teller." 
 
 Rose said Sunday on "Face The Nation" that the Syrian dictator was "remarkably calm" during the interview as he addressed the claims that he had gassed his own people. 
 
 Rose's full interview with Assad will air Monday night on PBS's "Charlie Rose". More excerpts were released Monday on "CBS This Morning." 
 
 Assad's government has blamed the Aug. 21 attack in Damascus' eastern Ghouta suburbs on opposition forces which have been battling to topple him from power for more than two years. 
 
 Russia has also suggested the rebels could have been behind the attack, and Moscow continues to urge the U.S. to delay any military action at least until a team of United Nations inspectors issues its report on the incident after collecting samples and evidence on the ground in Ghouta. The report is expected by mid-September, but will offer conclusions only on which chemical agents were used and how -- not on which side used them. 
 
 The Obama administration believes the evidence is already clear, based on secret intelligence allegedly showing Assad regime troops preparing for and even carrying out the attack on Ghouta using missiles tipped with chemical warheads, and intercepted communications between regime officials on the day of the attack. 
 
 Congressmen: Syrian action unpopular among American public 
 
 But while the White House has shared that intelligence with some members of Congress, and has managed to convince a few skeptical lawmakers, its public case for punitive action against Assad is based largely on circumstantial evidence. 
 
 U.S. officials and their allies around the world insist the Ghouta attack could only have been carried out by the Syrian government because only the Syrian military possesses the missiles, chemical agents and know-how necessary to successfully deliver a deadly toxin like sarin gas on such a wide scale. 
 
 Kerry makes case for Syria strike to Arab leaders 
 
 Secretary of State John Kerry has spent days trying to garner international backers for any U.S. military action in Syria, but he's managed to get firm commitments only from France and Saudi Arabia. 
 
 Kerry said Sunday in London that Saudi Arabia was supportive of a U.S-led strike and was convinced Assad was behind the Ghouta attack -- and he expected other Arab countries to issue statements of support on Monday, reported CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan. 
 
 But few were expected to say they would join in a military strike. 
 
 Kerry got a similarly hesitant response from the European Union on Saturday, which urged the world to send "a clear and strong response," but asked the U.S. to delay any action until the U.N. weapons inspectors finish their report. ||||| 1:31 November 20, 2013 
 
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– If the US does indeed strike Syria, "you should expect everything," "expect every action," from Syria in response, President Bashar al-Assad tells Charlie Rose in a new interview. CBS This Morning previewed the interview today; it airs in full on PBS tonight. Some of Assad's quotes, from CBS and the Guardian: "You should expect everything. Not necessarily from the government," Assad said when asked about Syria's response to a US strike. Syria is "not the only player in this region," Assad said, likely referring to Iran and Hezbollah. "You have different parties, you have different factions, you have different ideology. You have everything in this region now." Asked if that retaliation might include chemical warfare, Assad said it depends on whether "the rebels or the terrorists in this region or any other group have it. It could happen, I don't know. I am not fortune teller." "There has been no evidence that I used chemical weapons against my own people," Assad said; he insisted President Obama has not presented any evidence to Congress. (One report suggests the army may have used chemical weapons without Assad's OK.) Rose said Assad claims to feel remorse over the attack nonetheless, and that he would neither confirm nor deny whether his government has any chemical weapons. (If it does, Assad said, the weapons are under "centralized control.") "Our soldiers in another area were attacked chemically. Our soldiers," Assad said. "They went to the hospital as casualties, because of chemical weapons. But in the area where they said, 'The government used chemical weapons,' we only had video and we only have pictures and allegations. We're not there. Our forces, our police, our institutions don't exist. How can you talk about what happened if you don't have evidences? We're not like the American administration, we're not social media administration or government. We are the government that deal with reality." "We are against any WMD, any weapons of mass destruction, whether chemical or nuclear," Assad insisted.