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Originally Posted by New York Times
WASHINGTON — President Obama is prepared to move ahead with a limited military strike on Syria, administration officials said on Thursday, even with a rejection of such action by Britain’s Parliament, an increasingly restive Congress, and lacking an endorsement from the United Nations Security Council.
Although the officials cautioned that Mr. Obama had not made a final decision, all indications suggest that the strike could occur as soon as United Nations inspectors, who are investigating the Aug. 21 attack that killed hundreds of Syrians, leave the country. They are scheduled to depart Damascus, the capital, on Saturday.
The White House is to present its case for military action against Syria to Congressional leaders on Thursday night. Administration officials assert that the intelligence will show that forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad carried out the chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of Damascus.
The intelligence does not tie Mr. Assad directly to the attack, officials briefed on the presentation said, but the administration believes that it has enough evidence to carry out a limited strike that would deter the Syrian government from using these weapons again.
Mr. Obama, officials said, is basing his case for action both on safeguarding international standards against the use of chemical weapons and on the threat to America’s national interests posed by Syria’s use of those weapons. Administration officials said that threat was both to allies in the region, like Turkey and Israel, and to the United States itself, if Syria’s weapons fell into the wrong hands.
M. Obama’s rationale for a strike creates a parallel dilemma to the one that President George W. Bush confronted 10 years ago, when he decided to enter into a far broader war with nearly 150,000 American troops in Iraq — one that the Obama administration says differed sharply from its objectives in Syria — without seeking an authorizing resolution in the United Nations. In that case, they said, Mr. Bush was seeking to overthrow the Iraqi government. In this one, they argue, he is reinforcing an international ban on the use of chemical weapons, and seeking to prevent their use in Syria or against American allies, including Turkey, Jordan and Israel.
Russia and China, Syrian allies and permanent members of the Security Council, have so far refused to support any military action against Mr. Assad. But Mr. Obama, his aides say, has reached what one called “a pragmatic conclusion” that even the most ironclad evidence that chemical weapons were used would not change Russia’s objections.
“We have been trying to get the U.N. Security Council to be more assertive on Syria even before this incident,” Benjamin J. Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said Thursday in an interview. “The problem is that the Russians won’t vote for any accountability.”
The decision not to wait for the British Parliament to endorse a strike is notable, however. Mr. Bush relied on what he called a “coalition of the willing,” led by Britain. Mr. Obama has made clear that the initiative here would come from the United States, and that while he welcomes international participation, he is not depending on the involvement of foreign forces for what will essentially be an operation conducted entirely by the United States, from naval vessels off the Syrian coast.
One central piece of the White House intelligence, officials say, is an intercepted telephone call in which a Syrian commander seems to suggest that the chemical attack was more devastating than intended. “It sounds like he thinks this was a small operation that got out of control,” one intelligence official said Thursday.
Mr. Rhodes and other aides insist that there are major differences from the decision that faced Mr. Bush in 2003. “There is no direct parallel with 2003, given that the United States at that time had to prove the existence of weapons of mass destruction in a country where we were going to do a military intervention aimed at regime change,” Mr. Rhodes said.
The current American objective, officials say, is to halt future use of chemical weapons rather than remove the leadership that allowed their use. Mr. Obama has referred, somewhat vaguely, to reinforcing “international norms,” or standards, against the use of chemical weapons, which are categorized as weapons of mass destruction even though they are far less powerful than nuclear or biological weapons.
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