Obama balks on Syria chemical arms threat, saves US lies and decit for another day

Obama balks on Syria chemical arms threat
1 May, 2013 – Daily Star

BEIRUT: President Barack Obama, said Tuesday that the United States must be more certain of all the facts regarding the use of chemical weapons by Syrian leader Bashar Assad before he decides on how his country will intervene in the conflict.

The president said, however, that if it is determined that the Assad regime used chemical weapons “we would have to rethink the range of options that are available to us.”

With the U.S. disengaging from the unpopular war in Afghanistan and still smarting from the difficult conflict in Iraq, Obama has been reticent to unleash American military power in the Syrian fighting, a civil war that has killed tens of thousands of people.

The president said the conflict is a “blemish on the international community generally.”

But he added that he was not prepared to rush to respond to growing evidence that chemical weapons had been used in Syria, something he had termed would mark the crossing of a “red line” and a game-changer.

“I meant that we would have to rethink the range of options open to us,” Obama said.

In the White House news conference, the president said he had a full range of such “options on the shelf” but he declined to enumerate them.

Many critics of Obama’s disinclination to use the American military in Syria are calling for the president to establish safe zones for Syrian rebels, to protect them with a no-fly zone and begin sending arms to forces fighting to overthrow the Assad regime.

The problem facing the U.S. is that Syrian air defenses are far stronger than NATO allies faced when they intervened with air power in Libya, and some of the rebel forces identify as Islamists, aligned with Al-Qaeda.
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