Back in August, Obama bluntly warned Assads regime that while he had not at this point ordered an American military response to Syria's civil war, is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized."
When it comes to chemical weapons, what is "a whole bunch"? What does "systematic" mean? The White House has carefully refused to define either term precisely, keeping the president's options open. Republicans have called for a far more forceful U.S. role in Syria, notably by arming the rebels and establishing "safe zones" to protect the opposition or Syrians fleeing the fighting.
In 2008, Obama used his opposition to the Iraq warand Hillary Clintons initial support for itas a potent weapon to capture the Democratic presidential nomination. The flawed case for toppling Saddam Hussein looms large now as the president wrestles with the U.S. response to signs that Assads iron-fisted regime used chemical weapons in Syrias two-year civil war. The conflict has claimed the lives of an estimated 70,000 people.
I think all of us, not just in the United States but around the world, recognize how we cannot stand by and permit the systematic use of weapons like chemical weapons on civilian populations, Obama said as he met Friday in the Oval Office with King Abdullah II of Jordan.
The presidents comments came a day after Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and the White House revealed that U.S. intelligence believed , specifically , against opposition forces in the country's ongoing civil war.
On Thursday,that "our intelligence community does assess with varying degrees of confidence" that Assad's regime had used sarin. But top officialsfrom Hagel on downwarned that those findings did not mean that Assad had now crossed Obama's "red line" or that American military action might be imminent. Instead, they said Washington will now work with its allies, Syria's opposition and the United Nations to build what one top Obama aide called an airtight case.
"These are preliminary assessments; theyre based on our intelligence gathering. We have varying degrees of confidence about the actual use, but there are a range of questions around how, when, where these weapons may have been used," Obama said Friday, vowing "to make sure that we are investigating this as effectively and as quickly as we can."
"But I meant what Id said, and I will repeat," he said. "Horrific as it is when mortars are being fired on civilians and people are being indiscriminately killed, to use potential weapons of mass destruction on civilian populations crosses another line with respect to international norms and international law. And that is going to be a game changer."
"We have to act prudently. We have to make these assessments deliberately. But I think all of us, not just in the United States but around the world, recognize how we cannot stand by and permit the systematic use of weapons like chemical weapons on civilian populations," he said.
Just how big a factor is the March 2003 invasion of Iraq? A senior Obama aide, briefing reporters Thursday on a conference call arranged by the White House, made repeated references to it as a reason to tread cautiously.
Id say that given our own history with intelligence assessments, including intelligence assessments related to weapons of mass destruction, its very important that we are able to establish this with certainty and that we are able to present information that is airtight in a public and credible fashion," he said. "That is, I think, the threshold that is demanded."
White House press secretary Jay Carney sharply rejected any notion that Obama might show more "leniency" on weapons of mass destruction because of the Iraq War. "Absolutely not," he told reporters at his Friday briefing.
"The fact is that we do have some evidence and we need to build on that," Carney said. "The precedent you cite I think is a significant one, and it simply stands to reason that the assessments that we make, the intelligence community makes, are extraordinarily valuable, and they do excellent work, but they are building blocks towards a broader objective here, which is the accumulation of concrete evidenceevidence that can be corroborated, evidence that can be presented and reviewed and then acted on if the conclusion is that a red line has been crossed."
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