WarSclerotic

US officials to ‘Post’: UN path “dead on arrival” as Russia convenes Security Council on Syria | JPost | Israel News.

Report: Syria Seals Damascus, Prepares ‘Martyrs’ – Middle East – News – Israel National News.

View of the Syrian capital Damascus

AFP/File

The Syrian army is blocking off entrances to Damascus in advance of anticipated airstrikes by Western armies, Lebanese media outlets reported Thursday.

According to Al-Arabiya, quoting Syrian rebel sources, the Syrian army is also continuing to evacuate its bases in the region, and has left the Damascus international airport.

Residents of Damascus are reportedly storing food, water and other essential supplies in case airstrikes begin in the near future. Those living near army command centers have evacuated their homes.

However, Al-Arabiya also spoke with many Damascus residents who appeared unconcerned, and said they do not believe there is cause to panic.

The British Guardian spoke to a Syrian army officer who claimed that the army has also prepared crews of “martyrs” who are willing to stop United States warplanes using kamikaze attacks.

“If the US and British armies launch a single rocket we will launch three or four, and if their warplanes raid our skies they will face hell fire,” he declared.

“If we are unable to shoot down their warplanes with artillery, we have military pilots who are ready to attack these foreign warplanes by their own warplanes and blow them up in the air.”

Thirteen pilots, and a total of more than 8,000 Syrian soldiers, have expressed willingness to die in suicide missions if necessary, he claimed, adding, “I myself am ready to blow myself up against US aircraft carriers to stop them attacking Syria and its people.”

The Syrian regime continues to deny involvement in the chemical weapons attack near Damascus last week that has led U.S. and British leaders to openly consider military intervention.

Iran Revolutionary Guards chief: Israel will be destroyed if Syria is attacked | The Times of Israel.

Tehran ramps up rhetoric against the West and the Jewish state amid international debate on punitive strike at Assad

Commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, attends a press conference in Tehran earlier this month (photo credit: AP/Vahid Salemi)

An American attack on Syria will result in the destruction of Israel and have severe repercussions for the US and its allies, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards said.

A possible war in Syria “will result in the imminent destruction of the Zionist regime of Israel,” General Mohammad Ali Jafari said late Wednesday, according to a report Thursday in the state-sponsored Iranian Tasnim News Agency.

The American “proxy war scenario” in Syria has failed, so Washington and the West have resorted to a “direct military threat,” which, if carried out, will have “severe consequences,” he added.

The remarks from Jafari came at a time of intense international debate over a possible US-led strike on Syria, and followed bellicose statements from other high-ranking Iranian officials. Iran is a major backer of the Syrian government.

Military intervention in Syria by the US and its allies will “cost them dearly,” the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, General Hassan Firouzabadi, said Wednesday evening. “If the US attacks, the Zionists will burn,” he said, according to Israel’s Channel 2 news. He added that Israel would be the “sole beneficiary” of military escalation in Syria, which would have “far-reaching, grave consequences.”

“Any new military operation could prove to be a disaster not only for the region but also for humanity …and only the Zionists would benefit from that,” Firouzabadi said. The Syrian civil war, he added, had been “imposed” on the country from outside forces.

In comments Wednesday directed at the US, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a meeting with members of the new Iranian cabinet in Tehran that “the US threats and possible intervention in Syria are a disaster for the region. And if such an act is done, certainly, the Americans will sustain damage like when they interfered in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

He cautioned the US and its allies that their military intervention in Syria would bring increase in hatred of them, the Fars news agency reported.

“Starting this fire will be like a spark in a large store of gunpowder, with unclear and unspecified outcomes and consequences,” Khamenei said.

The speaker of the Iranian parliament, Ali Larjiani, said, “The result of such an unwise measure (a military attack on Syria) is regional anarchy which will entangle the naïve countries of the region.”

Speaking in parliament, he said that if any war was waged against Syria, “the country which has been destroyed by the terrorists during the past two years will not sustain so much damage as the warmongers will receive in this war.”

Obama, Syria and the townspeople of Auschwitz – A Special Place in Hell Israel News Broadcast | Haaretz.

I dread what is about to happen. But there are times when evil is such that countering it justifies risk to the townspeople next door.

By Bradley Burston | Aug. 28, 2013 | 5:10 PM | 10

An image released by the Syrian opposition’s Shaam News Network shows a man weeping over a relative who reportedly died in an alleged chemical attack in Syria, Aug. 2013. Photo by AFP

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the townspeople of Auschwitz. The people who lived down the road from the extermination works. The people who lived close enough to smell the cloud that rose from the ovens that the bodies of the gassed were shoved into.

Maybe they looked at the skies, wondering when the American air force would come to bomb the railroad tracks that led to the camp, in order to interrupt, if only temporarily, the business of genocide as usual.

The townspeople of Auschwitz must have thought a lot about what would happen to them if they said anything, if they did anything. And what would happen to them if they kept on doing nothing.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the townspeople of Auschwitz, in particular because innocent people are being gassed to death next door.

Here in the Holy Land, the genocide in Syria has made all of us, Israelis and Palestinians both, into the townspeople of Auschwitz. We are uncertain how to help, if to help.

We know that if the Americans bomb, there is every chance that innocent lives will be lost. We know that if the Americans bomb, we could become targets as well, and some of those innocent lives could be ours. But we know something else as well.

The world has changed since Auschwitz. There is still genocide, but the immediacy and universality of communications have made mass murder a lot harder for the murderers to hide, and a lot harder for the rest of us to hide from.

At this point, “the rest of us” is everyone. At this point, the world as a whole bears witness to the increasingly horrifying and altogether intentional murder of innocent civilians as a principal weapon of warfare, and as a tool to shore up a dictatorship whose brutality no longer has a rival on this planet.

At this point, no matter where we are in this world, we are all the townspeople of Auschwitz.

President Obama no longer has the option of doing nothing. Not only because a year ago he warned of “enormous consequences” were Syria to use chemical weapons, and because U.S. inaction could be seen by Assad and others as an invitation to further crimes against humanity.

And not only because Syria is believed to hold the world’s third largest stockpile of chemical weapons, after the U.S. and Russia.

President Obama needs to act because doing nothing in Syria has made all that is bad there, worse. Everything the U.S. said it wished to avoid, commentator Hussein Ibish has written, “an intensification of the conflict, a refugee and humanitarian crisis, increasing sectarian hatred, atrocities on both sides, a spread of the war into bordering countries, and the rise of extremist Al Qaida style groups among the rebels—have all been not only not prevented by relative American inaction. They have been promoted by it.”

Fundamentally, President Obama needs to act on the Syrian tragedy because if he does not, no one else will.

Many people of moral intelligence and sensitivity have questioned why America waited to act in Syria until a murderous Assad regime used chemical weapons, or why the U.S. military response should be confined to an effort to contain Syria’s chemical arsenal.

Acknowledging the horrendous nature of chemical weapons and the issue of U.S. credibility, author Peter Beinart asked on MSNBC this week “Is it really worse to kill people this way, than to kill them some other way? A hundred thousand people in Syria have died, and we’re going to go to war because 1,000 were killed with chemical weapons?”

One answer is because injury and death at the hands of nerve gases like Sarin are qualitatively more monstrous and vastly more terrifying than the already intolerable horrors of what we have come to call conventional armaments.

They are called weapons of mass destruction not only for their quantitative effect, but because their potential for causing suffering to human beings is unimaginable.

Like Auschwitz.

The more uncomfortable answer, however, is that for an expected American offensive to have significance, it should be accompanied by steps like intelligent and earnest support for such opposition groups as Salim Ideris’ Free Syrian Army, an alternative both to the Assad dynasty and to Al-Qaida, which seeks to supplant it.

Americans are justly wary of stepping into yet another gaping Big Muddy, this one with countless potential hazards and pitfalls, among them backlash from Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, and revenge attacks against Israel.

But there are times when evil is such that countering it justifies risk to the townspeople next door.

I dread what’s about to happen. But as one of the townspeople, I believe that this is one of those times.

Iran commander: US strike on Syria will mean the ‘imminent destruction’ of Israel | JPost | Israel News.

DUBAI – Iran’s Revolutionary Guards chief warned a US military attack on Syria would lead to the “imminent destruction” of Israel and would prove a “second Vietnam” for America, according to an Iranian news agency.

Shi’ite Muslim Iran, an arch-enemy of Israel, supports Syrian President Bashar Assad against mainly Sunni Muslim rebels trying to oust him in a two-and-a-half-year-old revolt.

Iran has blamed the rebels for a suspected chemical weapons on August 21 that killed hundreds of civilians. Opposition activists blame Assad’s forces, Washington has agreed and US President Barack Obama made the case for a limited military strike against Syria in response to the chemical attack.

Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said in an interview late on Wednesday with the Tasnim news agency that a US strike on Syria would not help Israel.

“An attack on Syria will mean the imminent destruction of Israel,” Jafari said, according to Tasnim.

The interview was widely picked up by Iranian media on Thursday. Tasnim, which launched in 2012, says on its website that it is devoted to “defending the Islamic Revolution against negative media propaganda”.

Jafari, as quoted by Tasnim, also warned the United States that it risked embroilment in a costly and protracted struggle if it intervened in Syria.

“Syria will turn into a more dangerous and deadly battlefield than the Vietnam War, and in fact, Syria will become the second Vietnam for the United States,” he said.

Thousands crowd gas mask centers in Haifa, Tel Aviv | The Times of Israel.

Civilians worried by Syria threat overwhelm distribution points in a scramble for protection, but IDF says it won’t open more

Israelis carry gas mask boxes outside a distribution center in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, on August 29, 2013. (photo credit: Avishag Shaar Yashuv/Flash90)

Thousands of Israelis lined up outside gas mask distribution centers on Thursday, despite efforts by authorities to calm fears of being on the receiving end of a threatened Syrian retaliation should the US take military action against the Assad regime.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said officers were deployed to maintain order in the northern city of Haifa, where more than 5,000 people jostled in line as they waited for their protective kits on Thursday. Crowds had swelled at the city’s only distribution center, a sports arena, long before its 8 a.m. opening time. By mid-morning 1,000 gas masks had been given out there to recipients who had waited as long as two and a half hours in the hot August sun, the Walla news site reported.

Long lines were reported in Tel Aviv and other stations as well. The postal service, which oversees the distribution, said an angry mob forcibly took gas masks from a distribution center in Jerusalem on Wednesday, leading to the site’s indefinite closure.

The scene Thursday was largely a repeat of the day before, which also saw thousands of Israelis line up at distribution centers around the country, despite IDF assessments that the chances of a Syrian attack on Israel is low.

In response to the demand the Home Front Command extended the opening hours of gas mask distribution points in key cities.

In an announcement on its website on Thursday, the command said that both the Haifa and Tel Aviv distribution centers increased their hours of operation by four hours and would be open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Previously both centers had closed at 3 p.m.

Many on Wednesday faced with long waits reported giving up and leaving the centers without their protective kits. Gas masks must be replaced every 15 or so years, depending on the model.

“It’s crazy what’s happening. There are women, babies, police, it’s a mess here,” one man told Israel Radio at a distribution center in Haifa on Wednesday. “They’re sending people into a panic, but there’s only one center in the entire north of the country. People came from Nahariya,” roughly an hour away.

However, IDF officials say there are no plans to open more distribution centers, Israel Radio reported.

While officials remain adamant any attack on Israel was unlikely, the IDF deployed additional Iron Dome batteries in the north Wednesday, and was said to be readying the Arrow short-range rocket defense system and Patriot anti-missile array for use on the northern front.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the IDF asked Israelis to remain calm.

“There is no reason to change our routine,” Netanyahu said in a statement Wednesday afternoon after holding a security assessment on the Syrian situation at IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv. “We are preparing for every eventuality. The IDF is ready to defend against any threat and to respond with force to any attempt to harm Israel’s citizens,” Netanyahu added.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit offered much the same message. In a statement Wednesday, it called on the public to remain calm and, “despite the possible American strike in Syria,” insisted “there is no reason to change our routine. Any change in [the army’s] instructions will be posted as necessary, and will be brought to the attention of every citizen using the broadest possible distribution methods.”

The national telephone hotline for gas mask distribution, at emergency phone number 104, saw waiting times of over 40 minutes on Wednesday afternoon. The Postal Service promised to increase the staff at the hotline.

MK Eli Yishai (Shas), chair of the Knesset Subcommittee for Home Front Preparedness, suggested Wednesday that the difficulties in gas mask distribution might reflect other problems in preparedness for possible attacks on the Israeli home front.

“The Israeli factories producing gas mask kits will be closed by October 2014 because of the Finance Ministry,” he charged, referring to planned cuts to the home front preparedness budget.

Yishai noted that the government had spent some NIS 200 million ($55 million) annually on the home front, but said Israel “must spend NIS 350 million to reach maximum preparedness.”

His Shas party Wednesday also called on the country to make more masks available for bearded men, who need a special model that fits over the whole head. The IDF says those models are reserved for Israelis with special needs.

AP contributed to this report.

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The Postal Service has published an English-language informational website about gas mask kits and how they can be obtained, as well as a dedicated Hebrew-language page with a constantly updating list of distribution center schedules and locations.

As the schedules can change, the Home Front Command has recommended calling 104 to confirm that a distribution center is open and operational before arriving.

The Postal Service also runs a nationwide home delivery service for gas masks that carries a fee of NIS 25-40 per household. It can be reached at *2237 or 03-713-3830.

In Jerusalem, the distribution center is at the Shmuel HaNavi Community Center located at Magen HaElef 3. It is open Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., until September 3.

In Haifa, the center is at the Romema Sports Center, 69 Pikah Way, above the post office. The distribution center will remain open Sunday-Thursday, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.

In Maaleh Adumim, the center is at Adumim Mall, at the entrance level inside Shalom Gate. It is open Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., through August 29.

In Beit Shemesh, at BIG FASHION Mall, Yigal Alon 3. Open Sunday-Thursday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., through August 29.

In Tel Aviv, at the Beit Hamiyun Post Office, Derech HaHagana 137. It is open Sunday-Thursday, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., until September 3.

As Damascus readies for war, Assad speaks of victory | The Times of Israel.

Bellicose Syrian statements precede possible Western strike, and pro-Assad daily warns of Iranian, Hezbollah action

Syrian President Bashar Assad, center, visits the Umayyad Electrical Station on May Day, May 1, 2013, a day after a powerful bomb hit the capital (photo credit: AP/SANA)

The Syrian government has begun preparing its public for war, amid Western assertions that the regime was behind a deadly chemical attack against citizens outside Damascus on August 21.

The Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, which is close to the Assad regime, reported on Thursday that the regime has come to believe that a Western attack will likely occur. In a recent meeting with the Syrian leadership, President Bashar Assad asked his generals to maintain high morale ahead of an imminent attack.

“Since the beginning of the crisis, you have known that we await the moment when our true enemy will intervene. I know that your morale is high and you are fully prepared to confront any aggression and safeguard the nation,” Assad was quoted by the daily as saying.

“This is a historic confrontation from which we shall emerge victorious,” he added.

In Damascus residents began to prepare for an expected American strike, which could come as early as Thursday, stocking up on water and batteries, according to Reuters.

Long lines for bread and other essentials were reported across the Syrian capital, as jittery residents tried to get ahead of feared shortages.

However, Syrian officials have attempted to remain upbeat, issuing threats against any possible Western military intervention in the country’s two-year-old civil war.

During a meeting with parliamentarians on Wednesday, Prime Minister Wael Al-Halqi assured his audience that Syria “will become a graveyard for its invaders.”

“The fact that the United States, Israel, and the West are fabricating lies about [our] use of chemical weapons in order to militarily intervene in Syria is a result of the Syrians’ steadfastness and the consecutive victories of our valiant army over their terrorist operatives.”

These statements seemed to clash with earlier comments by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, who on Tuesday opined that the West will not attack Syria. While denying that the regime used chemical weapons against its citizens, Moallem said that Syria was nevertheless prepared to confront a Western attack “with all means.”

Moallem’s deputy Faisal Mekdad told Reuters that he has submitted proof to the UN chemical weapons inspectors operating in Syria that the opposition has used sarin gas at all the sites of alleged attacks, adding that the same “terrorist gangs” will use the lethal substances against Europe “soon.”

Syria’s representative to the UN Bashar Jaafari requested that the inspectors look into three gas attacks against Syrian soldiers near Damascus which allegedly took place on August 22, 24 and 25, regime daily Al-Watan reported on Thursday.

‘Syria’s allies will not stand idly by’

Although Iran does not have a defense pact with Syria, as Foreign Minister Moallem pointed out at the press conference, Iran understands the ramifications of a Western strike for its own security interests in the region.

“Iran will not allow its Syrian ally to be attacked without intervening,” wrote Al-Akhbar journalist Ibrahim Al-Amin on Thursday, quoting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as saying that a Western attack would entail a “catastrophe” for the region.

As for Hezbollah, Al-Amin noted that the Shiite Lebanese party is part of a larger regional alliance led by Iran.

“Hezbollah is involved in the Syrian crisis, and specifically in the confrontation with the armed gangs which are connected to the West and to the jihadists. It has sacrificed dozens of martyrs there … any Western aggression against Syria will serve as additional motivation for Hezbollah not to stand more forcefully alongside its ally Bashar Assad, but to be in the heart of the battle to defend Syria from the aggression. How will it act? The answer to that question lies with Hezbollah,” wrote Amin.

Russia, meanwhile, announced that it would send an anti-submarine ship and a missile cruiser to the Mediterranean; but denied that the move had anything to do with Syria.

“This does not amount to a renewal of any grouping or groupings, it is a planned rotation,” a naval spokesman told Russia’s official news agency RIA Novosti.

Sorry for apologizing – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Op-ed: Israeli apology to Turkey over Marmara affair viewed by Erdogan as act of weakness

Hagai Segal

Less than six months have passed since Israel officially apologized to Turkey, but the gesture can already be defined as a huge mistake. The Israeli government knelt before Ankara and asked forgiveness for a sin it did not commit, and in exchange it received mainly spits in the face.

Prime Minister Erdogan continues to pester us, to despise us publicly and make false accusations against us. He did not release even one conciliatory glance towards us since we admitted – while bowing, as though we were defendants in a public trial – that we were to blame for the Marmara affair.

“I do not believe Erdogan will continue to attack Israel as he did before,” National Security Advisor Yaakov Amidror told Channel 2 on the night of the apology, but Erdogan did continue. As soon as he received the apology Erdogan kicked off a public humiliation festival, and last week he accused us of being behind the coup in Egypt, an accusation which embarrassed even our traditional enemies.

Contrary to its prior commitments, Ankara has yet to return its ambassador to Israel, but it benefits from the thousands of Israeli tourists who returned to Antalya. At this juncture, Turkey can be considered Israel’s most bitter enemy in the region after Iran.

What does this prove? That in contrast to the familiar mantra, sometimes it is more important to be right than to be wise. The Israeli instinct to sacrifice values and assets for the sake of good relations with the neighbors is leading it from one failure to another. Netanyahu and Amidror relinquished our honor for the sake of peace, but in the end we were left with neither honor nor peace.

Erdogan interpreted their apology as an act of weakness and concluded from it that he can continue his assault on us. Now one can only hope that we too will reach some conclusions of our own. The apology to Turkey cannot be withdrawn, but we can still take a tougher stance with regards to the European boycott of the settlements. For example, the government can take a deep breath and declare that it is banning the “Horizon 2000” program as long as Europe continues to ban Israeli projects in Judea and Samaria. Europe will think twice before declaring another boycott. It may even cause Erdogan to rethink his attitude towards Israel.

IDF on high alert ahead of possible US assault in Syria – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Limited call-up of reserve soldiers underway; army to hold situation assessment, decide whether to cancel leaves for troops stationed in north

Yoav Zitun

The IDF continues to prepare for the unlikely chance that Syria will attack Israel in response to a Western assault. Soldiers deployed along the Syrian and Lebanese borders as well as troops from other units were told to stay in their bases until the IDF’s Operations Division holds a situation assessment in which it will be decided whether to cancel leaves.

The limited call-up of reserve soldiers is also underway. Some 1,000 soldiers serving in the Intelligence Corps, Home Front Command and the Air Force’s air defense units have been mobilized.

Iron Dome battery near Haifa (Photo: AP)

 The troops include dozens of reservists from the Iron Dome’s sixth battery that is scheduled to be deployed in either central or northern Israel in the coming days.

The Home Front Command did not issue any special guidelines in the wake of mounting tensions in the region. The IDF has said it is unlikely that Syria will attack Israel as a response to a possible American assault.

Nevertheless, the army is not taking any chances and has deployed an Iron Dome battery in Haifa and a Patriot battery in northern Israel.

U.S. Facing Test on Data to Back Action on Syria – NYTimes.com.

By MARK MAZZETTI and MARK LANDLER

¶ WASHINGTON — The evidence of a massacre is undeniable: the bodies of the dead lined up on hospital floors, those of the living convulsing and writhing in pain and a declaration from a respected international aid group that thousands of Syrians were gassed with chemical weapons last week.

¶ And yet the White House faces steep hurdles as it prepares to make the most important public intelligence presentation since February 2003, when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell made a dramatic and detailed case for war to the United Nations Security Council using intelligence — later discredited — about Iraq’s weapons programs.

¶ More than a decade later, the Obama administration says the information it will make public, most likely on Thursday, will show proof of a large-scale chemical attack perpetrated by Syrian forces, bolstering its case for a retaliatory military strike on Syria.

¶ But with the botched intelligence about Iraq still casting a long shadow over decisions about waging war in the Middle East, the White House faces an American public deeply skeptical about being drawn into the Syrian conflict and a growing chorus of lawmakers from both parties angry about the prospect of an American president once again going to war without Congressional consultation or approval.

¶ American officials said Wednesday there was no “smoking gun” that directly links President Bashar al-Assad to the attack, and they tried to lower expectations about the public intelligence presentation. They said it will not contain specific electronic intercepts of communications between Syrian commanders or detailed reporting from spies and sources on the ground.

¶ But even without hard evidence tying Mr. Assad to the attack, administration officials asserted, the Syrian leader bears ultimate responsibility for the actions of his troops and should be held accountable.

¶ “The commander in chief of any military is ultimately responsible for decisions made under their leadership,” said the State Department’s deputy spokeswoman, Marie Harf — even if, she added, “He’s not the one who pushes the button or says ‘go’ on this.”

¶ Administration officials said that communications between military commanders intercepted after Wednesday’s attack provided proof that the assault was not the result of a rogue unit acting against orders. It is unclear how much detail about these communications, if any, will be made public.

¶ In an interview on Wednesday with the PBS program “NewsHour,” President Obama said he still had not made a decision about military action. But he said that a military strike could be a “shot across the bow, saying ‘stop doing this,’ that can have a positive impact on our national security over the long term.”

¶ The bellicose talk coming from the administration is unnerving some lawmakers from Mr. Obama’s party, who are angry that the White House seems to have no inclination to seek Congress’s approval before launching a strike in Syria.

¶ “I am still waiting to see what specifically the administration and other involved partners have to say about a potential military strike, but I am concerned about how effective such an action could be,” said Representative Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat who is the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. “I am worried that such action could drag the United States into a broader direct involvement in the conflict.”

¶ Despite the Obama administration’s insistence that the graphic images of the attack go far in making a case for military action in Syria, some experts said that the White House had its own burden of proof.

¶ Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that whatever evidence the administration put forward would be the American intelligence community’s “most important single document in a decade.”

¶ The Obama administration, Mr. Cordesman said, needs to use intelligence about the attack “as a key way of informing the world, of building up trust in U.S. policy and intelligence statements, and in moving U.S. strategic communications from spin to convincing truth.”

¶ And yet it appears that the public presentation of the Syria evidence will be limited. Instead of the theater of Mr. Powell’s 2003 speech — which included satellite photographs, scratchy recordings of conversations between Iraqi officials and a vial of white powder meant to symbolize anthrax — American officials said the intelligence assessment they are preparing to make public will be similar to a modest news release that the White House issued in June to announce that the Assad government had used chemical weapons “on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year.”

¶ Based on that conclusion, Mr. Obama authorized a limited program of supplying the Syrian rebels with arms, which have yet to arrive.

¶ As the White House now considers direct military action in Syria, something it has resisted for two years, Speaker John A. Boehner wrote a letter on Wednesday to Mr. Obama asking the president to provide a “clear, unambiguous explanation of how military action — which is a means, not a policy — will secure U.S. objectives and how it fits into your overall policy.”

¶ The discussion has even brought in former officials intimately involved in making the hurried public case for the Iraq war. In an interview with Fox Business Network, Donald Rumsfeld, who was defense secretary at the time, said Wednesday that “there really hasn’t been any indication from the administration as to what our national interest is with respect to this particular situation.”

¶ Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, has been scathing in his criticism of Mr. Obama for the opposite reason — that the president in his view has not taken enough action. Mr. McCain has said that doubts about military action expressed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, have emboldened the Syrian government to use chemical weapons and that Mr. Obama, having allowed Mr. Assad to cross his “red line” on the use of these weapons on previous occasions, had little standing now.

¶ “Now this is the same president that two years ago said that Bashar Assad must leave office, and so where is America’s credibility?” Mr. McCain said on Fox News. “Where is our ability to influence events in the region? And I promise you that those who say we should stay out of Syria do not understand that this is now a regional conflict.”

¶ The administration plans to brief leaders in the House and Senate with a classified version of its intelligence assessment about the attack, according to Congressional aides.

¶ Americans over all have been skeptical about the United States getting involved in Syria’s civil war, although surveys show they are more open to a limited strike on Syrian targets using cruise missiles or drones.

¶ There has not been a major poll released since last Wednesday’s chemical attacks, but a poll published by Quinnipiac University last month found that 61 percent of people said it was not in the national interest to intervene in Syria, while 27 percent said it was. By a similar split, 59 percent opposed providing weapons to rebel forces, while 27 percent were in favor. But 49 percent of people said they would support missile strikes against government forces if the strikes did not endanger American lives, while 38 percent said they were opposed.

¶ It is the fear of the United States getting dragged into yet another Middle Eastern war that before last Wednesday had animated opposition — both inside the White House and across the country as a whole — to American military intervention in Syria.

¶