President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry both spoke on Friday to make the case for military involvement in Syria in light of Bashar al-Assad allegedly using chemical weapons against his own people; the Obama administration also released a report detailing the use of chemical weapons within Syria, according to the New York Times.
"Read for yourselves the evidence from thousands of sources," Kerry said. "This is the indiscriminate, inconceivable horror of chemical weapons. This is what Assad did to his own people."
After the last decade of military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan the American people are rightfully war-weary, President Obama explained that any action taken in Syria will be a "limited, narrow act" and will not involve another prolonged engagement, according to the Los Angeles Times.
"We're not considering any open-ended commitment," President Obama said. "We're not considering any boots-on-the-ground approach."
While the White House has kept congressional leaders in the loop while trying to decide how to deal with Syria they do not plan on asking Congress to authorize the use of force, which many members of Congress are calling for, according to the Los Angeles Times.
"There is a certain weariness, given Afghanistan. There is a certain suspicion of any military action post-Iraq. And I very much appreciate that," President Obama said. "It's important for us to recognize that when over a thousand people are killed, including hundreds of innocent children, through the use of a weapon that 98 or 99 percent of humanity says should not be used even in war, and there is no action, then we're sending a signal... That is a danger to our national security."
Kerry said that the amount of evidence that Assad used chemical weapons mandates that the world take action against the Syrian leader now.
"If we choose to live in the world where a thug and a murderer like Bashar al-Assad can gas thousands of his own people with impunity," Kerry said, "even after the United States and our allies said no, and then the world does nothing about it, there will be no end to the test of our resolve and the dangers that will flow from those others who believe that they can do as they will."
The intelligence report that was released on Friday says that Syrian troops were likely using the chemical weapons as they usually would even though there were U.N. weapons inspectors in the country. Some of Syria's allies have made the argument that Assad wouldn't have used the weapons with the inspectors nearby, according to the Washington Post.
"The Syrian regime has used chemical weapons over the last year primarily to gain the upper hand or break a stalemate in areas where it had struggled to seize and hold strategically valuable territory," the report said. "We assess that the regime's frustration with its inability to secure large portions of Damascus may have contributed to its decision use chemical weapons on Aug. 21."
The entire report can be read at this link.
