Obama plays down U.S. intervening in Syria, a year after calling chemical weapons a ‘red line’

The Associated Press reports: President Barack Obama on Friday played down the prospect of speedy U.S. intervention in Syria, stressing the difficulty of ordering military action against the Assad government without a strong international coalition and a legal mandate from the United Nations.

While his administration weighed military responses to this week’s claims of a large-scale chemical weapons attack near Damascus, Obama spoke as cautiously as ever about getting involved in a war that has killed more than 100,000 people and now includes Hezbollah and al-Qaida.

He made no mention of the “red line” of chemical weapons use which he marked out for Syrian President Bashar Assad a year ago and which U.S. intelligence says has been breached at least on a small scale several times since.

“If the U.S. goes in and attacks another country without a U.N. mandate and without clear evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it — do we have the coalition to make it work?” Obama said Friday. “Those are considerations that we have to take into account.”

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3 thoughts on “Obama plays down U.S. intervening in Syria, a year after calling chemical weapons a ‘red line’”

  1. dickerson3870

    RE: “Obama plays down U.S. intervening in Syria, a year after calling chemical weapons a ‘red line’ “

    SEE: “Fear Spreads Through Palestinian Camps in Syria”, by Franklin lamb, CounterPunch.org, 8/23/13

    [EXCERPTS] . . . Palestinian Popular Committee in al-Yarmouk Camp as well as the other twelve camps (two “unofficial” ) have reported both directly and indirectly to this observer that they possess information that clearly suggests the possibility, indeed probability, of a terrorist use of chemical weapons in the Camp, calling the Palestinian factions to take preemptive steps to prevent that.

    The Popular Committee inside the “free” area of Yarmouk, pockets inside the eastern edge of the camp, advised in a statement, “in the framework of agitating the political and media war against the government of Syria, channels of destruction and sedition have started to air misleading propaganda, claiming that the Syrian Arab Army would fire mortars and or missiles into the Camp with chemical gases, whereas these elements themselves are planning chemical attacks to blame the government much as what happened in Irbin.” . . .

    SOURCE – http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/23/fear-spreads-through-palestinian-camps-in-syria/

  3. Norman

    I wonder, it seems that there are flaws in this recent example that the use of chemical weapons were used, but by whom? It depends on who is describing what they view, which is only from the video clips. I also have this nagging feeling, that someone, is trying to sucker the “O” into military intervention? The only way out seems to be for the U.S. to pull out of the M.E. with its Military, for they sure have created one ginormous “clusterfuck”, bar none. There is more at stake there then meets the eye of the average person. Meanwhile, the death and destruction continues unabated, but the West sure don’t seem to care.

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