WarSclerotic

US forces move closer to Syria as options weighed | The Times of Israel.

Fourth warship with ballistic missiles deployed to eastern Mediterranean; top US general Dempsey to present Obama with Syria strike scenarios Saturday

By AP and Michal Shmulovich August 24, 2013, 10:32 am

US President Barack Obama, pictured here speaking in Syracuse, New York in August, says a possible chemical weapons attack in Syria this week is a “big event of grave concern” that has hastened the timeframe for determining a US response. (photo credit: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

WASHINGTON — US naval forces are moving closer to Syria as President Barack Obama considers military options for responding to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad government. The president emphasized that a quick intervention in the Syrian civil war was problematic, given the international considerations that should precede a military strike.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel declined to discuss any specific force movements while saying that Obama had asked the Pentagon to prepare military options for Syria. US defense officials told The Associated Press that the Navy had sent a fourth warship armed with ballistic missiles into the eastern Mediterranean Sea but without immediate orders for any missile launch into Syria.

US Navy ships are capable of a variety of military action, including launching Tomahawk cruise missiles, as they did against Libya in 2011 as part of an international action that led to the overthrow of the Libyan government.

“The Defense Department has a responsibility to provide the president with options for contingencies, and that requires positioning our forces, positioning our assets, to be able to carry out different options — whatever options the president might choose,” Hagel told reporters traveling with him to Asia.

Hagel said the US is coordinating with the international community to determine “what exactly did happen” near Damascus earlier this week. According to reports, a chemical attack in a suburb of the capital killed at least 100 people. It would be the most heinous use of chemical weapons since Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1988.

According to CBS News, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey is expected to present President Obama with options for a Syria strike during a meeting at the White House Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, the French newspaper Le Figaro reported Saturday that a possible reason Syrian President Bashar Assad may have deployed chemical weapons earlier this week was because Syrian rebel units, also comprising “Israeli, Jordanian, and CIA commandos,” had been training for a week near Daraa in southern Syria and were approaching Damascus.

The newspaper mentioned the fact that US-Jordanian military exercises have been ongoing in the Hashemite Kingdom. American special ops teams have also been training the Jordanian army to handle possible chemical threats from Syria, Jordanian Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour told reporters earlier this week.

Top military officials, including general Dempsey, will come to Jordan next week to discuss recent developments in Syria, the Hashemite Kingdom’s semi-official news agency, Petra, reported Saturday. Army leaders from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, France, Britain, Canada, Germany, and Italy were also set to attend.

Obama remained cautious about getting involved in a war that has killed more than 100,000 people and now includes Hezbollah and al-Qaeda. He made no mention of the “red line” of chemical weapons use that he marked out for Assad a year ago and that US intelligence says has been breached at least on a small scale several times since.

“If the US goes in and attacks another country without a UN 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.”

Obama conceded in an interview on CNN’s “New Day” program that the episode is a “big event of grave concern” that requires American attention. He said any large-scale chemical weapons usage would affect “core national interests” of the United States and its allies. But nothing he said signaled a shift toward US action.

The New York Times reported Saturday that Obama aides were studying the NATO air war in Kosovo as a precedent for ways how to handle a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria without United Nations backing. The Obama administration was looking into ways to circumvent Russia’s likely veto of any military action in Syria at the UN Security Council, the report stated. It was seeking to build an international coalition, based on legal justification that Syrian civilians are greatly suffering, in support of such military action.

US defense officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss ship movements publicly. But if the US wants to send a message to Assad, the most likely military action would be a Tomahawk missile strike, launched from a ship in the Mediterranean.

For a year now, Obama has threatened to punish Assad’s regime if it resorted to its chemical weapons arsenal, among the world’s vastest, saying use or even deployment of such weapons of mass destruction constituted a “red line” for him. A US intelligence assessment concluded in June chemical weapons have been used in Syria’s civil war, but Washington has taken no military action against Assad’s forces.

US officials have instead focused on trying to organize a peace conference between the government and opposition. Obama has authorized weapons deliveries to rebel groups, but none are believed to have been sent so far.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters Friday that the president didn’t expect to put “boots on the ground” in Syria.

In his first comments on Syria since the alleged chemical attack, Obama said the US is still trying to find out what happened. Hagel said Friday that a determination on the chemical attack should be made swiftly because “there may be another attack coming,” although he added that “we don’t know” whether that will happen.

After rebels similarly reported chemical attacks in February, US confirmation took more than four months. In this instance, a UN chemical weapons team is already on the ground in Syria. Assad’s government, then as now, has rejected the claims as baseless.

Obama also cited the need for the US to be part of a coalition in dealing with Syria. America’s ability by itself to solve the Arab country’s sectarian fighting is “overstated,” he said.

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