By Courtesy of NBC
Christopher Gregory/The New York Times
Obama Makes Remarks on Syria: President Obama said that he had not made a final decision about Syria, but that he was not considering any military action that would require a long-term campaign or troops on the ground.
United Nations weapons inspectors left Syria for Lebanon on Saturday as the Obama administration made an aggressive and coordinated push to justify a military intervention on the grounds that American credibility was at stake.
The inspection team left after spending the past four days in Syria, an effort that has been a factor in the planning for when an American cruise missile strike could be carried out. An Associated Press crew saw the team enter Lebanon at its Masnaa border crossing with Syria.
The team's departure came as the Obama administration was grappling with the British Parliament's vote against an attack on Syria, a stunning blow to White House plans for a broad coalition to punish President Bashar al-Assad of Syria for a mass killing in the suburbs of Damascus last week. Still, President Obama and his top aides gave every indication that they were in final preparations for an attack that could pull the United States into a grinding civil war that has already claimed more than 100,000 lives.
As the Pentagon was making its preparations, opposition officials in Damascus said the government had been moving troops, equipment and truckloads of paper files into civilian areas. "We assume that Assad had been doing this to protect his strategic assets from U.S. cruise missile strikes," said Dan Layman of the Syrian Support Group, which supports the opposition to Mr. Assad.
Privately, some American officials acknowledged mistakes over the past week in their buildup for a strike, not least misjudging the toxic politics of taking military action in the Middle East. It is unclear when Mr. Obama realized that the British vote would go against him, but it was not until Friday afternoon that the White House released what it said was evidence of chemical weapons use by the Assad forces — nearly 24 hours after Parliament had voted rather than beforehand, when it might have been used to build a coalition against Mr. Assad.
Deprived of the support of Britain, America's most stalwart wartime ally, the Obama administration scrambled behind the scenes to build international support elsewhere for a strike that might begin as early as this weekend. Officials were still holding out hope that at least one Arab country might publicly join the military coalition.
The White House got a boost on Friday from an ally that has had a long, tortured diplomatic relationship with the United States, and that vehemently opposed the American-led war in Iraq. In France, President François Hollande offered vigorous support for military action in Syria, saying that the Aug. 21 attack "must not go unpunished." The French endorsement led Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday to praise France as "our oldest ally" — a reference to a partnership that goes back to the American Revolution and a not so subtle dig at the country's neighbor across the English Channel.
Late on Friday, the Russian government condemned the threats of military action and said any strike not authorized by the United Nations Security Council would be a violation of international law. "Even U.S. allies are calling for a 'pause' to wait for the completion of work by the group of United Nations experts to get an objective picture of what happened," Aleksandr K. Lukashevich, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a statement.
Mr. Kerry said the United Nations could not respond to the Syrian chemical weapons attack because of Russia's veto authority on the Security Council, which prevents the Council from galvanizing "the world to act, as it should."
Mr. Kerry also said that the decisions made in other countries were not foremost on the president's mind. "President Obama will ensure that the United States of America makes our decisions on our own timelines, based on our values and our interests," he said in forceful remarks from the State Department that presented the administration's rationale for an attack.
Reporting was contributed by Michael D. Shear, David E. Sanger and Robert Worth from Washington, David M. Herszenhorn from Moscow, and Gerry Mullany from Hong Kong.
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