U.S. Officials Are Weighing Response to Assault in Syria
By MARK LANDLER, MARK MAZZETTI and ALISSA J. RUBIN.
Amid a belief that chemical weapons were used in an attack Wednesday,
senior officials met at the White House on Thursday to debate options
ranging from a cruise missile strike to a more sustained air assault.
Bassam Khabieh/Reuters
Aftermath of Attack in Syria:
Hundreds of Syrians were killed by what rebels call a chemical weapons attack carried out by the government.
By MARK LANDLER, MARK MAZZETTI and ALISSA J. RUBIN.
Published: August 22, 2013
WASHINGTON — The day after a deadly assault in Syria that bore many of
the hallmarks of a chemical weapons attack, a sharply divided Obama
administration on Thursday began weighing potential military responses
to President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
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Photographs: Syrian Rebels Report Chemical Attack
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Video Feature: Watching Syria’s War: In Shock, Survivor of Attack Says, ‘I’m Alive’
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Map: Reported Deaths in Syria
Shaam News Network, via Associated Press
A photo of victims provided by the Syrian opposition. More Photos »
Tim Brakemeier/European Pressphoto Agency
Ahmet Davutoglu, left, and Guido Westerwelle, the
foreign ministers of Turkey and Germany, in Berlin on Thursday.
More Photos »
Senior officials from the Pentagon, the State Department and the
intelligence agencies met for three and a half hours at the White House
on Thursday to deliberate over options, which officials say could range
from a cruise missile strike to a more sustained air campaign against
Syria.
The meeting broke up without any decision, according to senior
officials, amid signs of a deepening division between those who advocate
sending Mr. Assad a harsh message and those who argue that military
action now would be reckless and ill timed.
In an interview with CNN broadcast on Friday, Mr. Obama said the United
States is “gathering information” about the chemical weapon reports, but
he suggested that it is already clear that the incident will demand
“America’s attention.”
“What we’ve seen indicates that this is clearly a big event of grave
concern,” Mr. Obama said during an interview broadcast on CNN’s “New
Day” program. “This is something that is going to require America’s
attention.”
Mr. Obama said his administration does not expect cooperation from
Syria’s regime to determine what happened in the attack. But he said
that when chemical weapons are used, “that starts getting to some core
national interests that the United States has.”
Debates about Syria have played out across the Atlantic. France backed
the use of force to counter such an attack, and Turkey and Israel
expressed outrage. But diplomats in several countries conceded there was
no stomach among the Western allies, including the United States, for
long-term involvement in a messy, sectarian civil war.
While the Obama administration said it would wait for the findings of a
United Nations investigation of the attack, American officials spoke in
strikingly tougher terms about what might happen if President Obama
determined that chemical weapons were used.
“If these reports are true, it would be an outrageous and flagrant use
of chemical weapons by the regime,” the State Department spokeswoman,
Jen Psaki, said. “The president, of course, has a range of options that
we’ve talked about before that he can certainly consider.”
The United States first confirmed in April that it believed the Syrian
government had used chemical weapons, and Obama administration officials
responded by signaling that they would supply the rebels with weapons.
But to date, none have arrived, opposition officials said.
Among American officials, there was a growing belief that chemical
weapons had been used in the latest attack, early Wednesday east of
Damascus — potentially the worst of its kind since Saddam Hussein used
chemical weapons against the Kurds in Iraq in the 1980s — and little
doubt that anyone but Mr. Assad’s forces would have used them.
But given how difficult it was last time to prove the use of chemical
weapons, administration officials offered no timetable for how long it
might take this time, raising questions about how promptly the United
States could act.
Israel said its intelligence strongly suggested a chemical weapons
attack, while the Syrian opposition pointed to evidence, including the
use of four rockets and the locations from which they were fired, that
members of the opposition said proved the attack could have been carried
out only by the government’s forces.
An opposition official described an assault that began shortly after 2
a.m., when the rockets, which they said were equipped with chemical
weapons, were launched. Two were fired from a bridge on the highway from
Damascus to Homs; the others were launched from a Sironex factory in
the Qabun neighborhood of the Syrian capital. The Assad government has
denied involvement, and Russian officials have accused the rebels of
staging the attack.
The rebels said the government’s presumed goal was to weaken the
opposition before a major conventional attack with tanks, armored
personnel carriers and attack planes. On Thursday, fighting persisted in
the area, raising doubts about the ability of the United Nations to
send investigators to collect samples from the wounded and dead.
Among the options discussed at the White House, officials said, was a
cruise missile strike, which would probably involve Tomahawks launched
from a ship in the Mediterranean Sea, where the United States has two
destroyers deployed.
The Pentagon also has combat aircraft — fighters and bombers — deployed
in the Middle East and in Europe that could be used in an air campaign
against Syria. The warplanes could be sent aloft with munitions to be
launched from far outside Syrian territory, which is protected by a
respectable air defense system.
The targets could include missile or artillery batteries that launch
chemical munitions or nerve gas, as well as communications and support
facilities. Symbols of the Assad government’s power — headquarters and
government offices — also could be among the proposed targets, officials
said.
As leaders digested the harrowing images from Syria of victims gasping
for breath or trembling, there was a flurry of phone calls among
diplomats expressing horror at the calamitous situation in Syria and
frustration at the lack of an obvious response.
“They are all bad choices,” said a European diplomat who asked not to be named because of the delicacy of the situation.
Secretary of State John Kerry spoke to Ahmad al-Jarba, the president of
the Syrian opposition. Mr. Kerry expressed his condolences and the Obama
administration’s “commitment to looking into what has happened on the
ground,” Ms. Psaki said.
Mr. Kerry also spoke to Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister of France,
who raised the prospect of military action. He called Turkey’s foreign
minister, Ahmet Davutoglu; several Arab foreign ministers; the European
Union’s senior foreign policy official, Catherine Ashton; and the
secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon.
At home, however, officials said the administration remained divided
about how to proceed. “There’s a split between those who feel we need to
act now and those who feel that now is a very bad time to act,” said
one senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss
the administration’s internal deliberations.
The official did not give details about who pushed for a hawkish
response to the attack and who urged caution, but he said that some at
the White House meeting raised worries that it would take time to build
international support for a military response, and that any strikes
against Mr. Assad’s government might worsen a refugee crisis that has
already placed great strain on Syria’s neighbors, particularly Jordan.
Neither the United States nor European countries yet have a “smoking
gun” proving that Mr. Assad’s troops used chemical weapons in the
attack, the official said. But he said intelligence agencies had amassed
circumstantial evidence that some kind of chemical had been used — not
the least of which was the hundreds of casualties.
“The sheer number of bodies is one pretty good indicator,” he said.
If the United States decided to move ahead with a military response with
the help of Western allies, it would almost certainly be one more in a
lengthening series of conflicts where the United States has played a
leading role that would lack the United Nations imprimatur, including in
Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mohammad Salaheddine, a Syrian reporter for Al Aan Television, an Arab
satellite television station, painted a bleak picture of the situation
in East Ghouta, the area near Damascus that was the site of the reported
chemical attack.
Mr. Salaheddine was reached by Skype on Thursday with the help of the
Syrian Support Group, an American-based organization that backs the
opposition.
He asserted that more than 1,500 people had been killed by the chemical
attack and that many more had been wounded. The area, he said, was cut
off by the fighting, making it hard for opposition members to smuggle
hair, urine and blood samples out for analysis.
Adding to the opposition’s frustration, two of its officials said that
none of the weapons American officials said would be provided by the
C.I.A. had yet been delivered.
Senior United States military officials, in particular Gen. Martin E.
Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have cited the risks
and costs of a large-scale military intervention as has been urged by
some members of Congress.
Yet the greater political risk now may be to Mr. Obama’s credibility,
analysts said, given that he laid down a red line last summer to prevent
Mr. Assad from using chemical weapons again.
“Assuming that there was a large-scale chemical attack, it indicates
that the regime has not been deterred by the statements coming out of
Washington,” said Jeffrey White, a former Middle East analyst with the
Defense Intelligence Agency who is now a fellow at the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy.
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